Striving to update its products and image, AT&T Wednesday
introduced a Web services offering to help corporations and government
agencies share data with suppliers, partners and customers.
AT&T WebService Connect allows different applications from different sources
to communicate without time-consuming custom coding. And because it is
XML-based
programming language.
Developed over the last year with partner Grand Central Communications,
WebService Connect plays into AT&T broader strategy of evolving
from a long-distance phone company to a provider of enterprise network
services.
The Bedminster, N.J., company, which has seen its traditional long-distance
business swoon because of increased competition, believes it can move “up
the computing stack” to higher value services because of its extensive
Internet protocol network and close relationships with enterprise customers.
“This takes us out of merely bits and bytes and moves us into reliable
messaging infrastructure,” AT&T’s David Greenebaum told
internetnews.com.
The service will be rolled out gradually in the coming months. It starts at
about $34,000 per month, although prices could run higher depending on
usage. In terms of its telecom competitors, AT&T believes it is farthest
along in offering Web services
Primarily, WebService Connect will appeal to companies with a lot of
inter-enterprise contact, Greenebaum said. There’s very little chance these
companies and their suppliers, partners and customers all work on the same
computing platforms and applications.
However, large companies, especially in sectors like banking, are also
grappling with different systems, making integration difficult. This need is
only magnified as the financial service industry continues to contract
though mergers.
An offering like WebService Connect should appeal to CIOs as a way to
streamline processes and get an overall view of their operation, Greenebaum
said. The first announced customer for the service is Thomson Financial, a
provider of information and technology to the financial community.
A spokeswoman for the company, a subsidiary of Thomson Corp. , was not immediately available to discuss how many customers or
partners are tied into the network.
In a statement, Thomson Financial CIO Jeff Scott said “customers can use
our services and applications on demand — in the format and on the systems
of their choice.”
The Web services concept became popular about two years ago, but its
adoption has been slowed because of a paucity of standards concerning
management, interoperability and security. Microsoft ,
IBM are among the vendors developing specifications for the technology.
