Web services

The Digital Cold War: Setting the Standard for Web Services.

How Sun or Microsoft will Shape the Information Economy.

A special event organized by the Operations and Technology Management Department, London Business School.

The term 'Web services' represents the overall concept of technologies and  programming standards to enable independent software applications to  interact with each other over existing Internet protocols.  Web services aim to
ultimately eliminate the "productivity paradox" by taking much of the existing complexity and integration difficulties from software and thus making the benefits of ICT investment more tangible.  This amounts to a true revolution in business, the "next big thing" brought about by technology - with a disruptive potential as high as that of the Internet or the PC itself.

The implications are enormous and widespread: ICT procurement decisions; ERP and CRM platforms; B2B and B2C businesses; and even the whole economic structure of many industries may be transformed by the emergence of web services. The new technology is expected to make it possible for different web services enabled applications to connect with each other and exchange information, thus having the potential to render obsolete the apparent advantages of current "integrated" solutions and allow the emergence of a whole new breed of competitors in many industries. As with most disruptive technologies, the diffusion of Web services may imply important value migration from players that resist the change to those that lead the change. Is your company prepared for the challenge?  Are you?

For the first time in Europe, the two leading contenders in this technological and business battle faced each other in an open debate aimed at clarifying the advantages and disadvantages of their proposals, and the full impact of Web services. Professor Fernando Suarez from the London Business School - an expert in technology management - moderated the debate, the various parts of which can be seen on video (see link box on the right).

This event was sponsored by the Centre for Scientific Enterprise [CSEL] and the School´s MBA Office.