Tech guru: Ideas needed to advance Web services

From...

By Jack McCarthy

(IDG) -- John Seely Brown, the longtime chief scientist of Xerox, offered some outside-the-box thinking Monday on the much publicized but as yet largely unrealized Web services computing model.

Brown said technology leaders need to step back from the growing complexity of their projects and look at some social and economic models to inform their thinking.

IDG.net INFOCENTER InfoWorld Main Page InfoWorld Test Center Subscribe to InfoWorld Newsletters Infoworld Opinions and Spotlights Related IDG.net Stories CTO Forum: Starting small is key to software as a service CTO Forum: Sun founder touts 'real-time enterprise' CTO Forum: Tech leaders ponder computing complexities Features PC World.com Product Finder Bluetooth wireless connectivity set to take off DSL in distress Visit an IDG site Choose a site: IDG.net CIO Computerworld Darwin Dummies.com GamePro.com The Industry Standard ITWorld.com InfoWorld.com JavaWorld LinuxWorld Macworld Online Network World Fusion PC World Publish.com UnixInsider IDG.net search

"Seeing differently is a critical skill for tomorrow's chief technology officers," said Brown, speaking at InfoWorld's CTO Forum.

Web services, in which companies can buy their information technologies as services over the Internet, are being slowed by complex problems of security and other issues.

"How do we bundle business processes in this model," Brown asked.

"There are the ideas of the Nash equilibrium, a play on different ways to bundle things."

Nash's equilibrium point, as noted in the film "A Beautiful Mind," outlined an economic theory that allows people and businesses that interact to maximize their individual payoff while also maximizing the overall outcome.

Brown said that an appreciation for this kind of thinking would help create the "trusted medium" that is required for building Web services.

Technology is at an "inflection point" where the need is "not to build more functionality around everything, but to step back and say we can build loosely structured technology, including loosely coupled technology platforms," he said.

"How do we move forward to rapidly stream together the right kinds of processes that do all we need to do?" Brown asked. "Technological determinism won't work. Real innovation involves people and business in all the complication of real life. How do we really do innovation between technological innovation and social projects? We need to step back and honor the co-evolution."

The trick, Brown said, will be to develop a trusted medium that will foster the willingness of enterprises to open up their core systems to a service model.

Rather than close off enterprise systems, corporations can move their applications out to the edge of their networks, and then into the "cloud," an Internet-based medium where interactions can take place.

"There may be new entities -- service grids as a managed service in the center of the cloud that [can create] a trusted medium," Brown said. These service grids can offer "transparent mechanisms on any platform," and the ability to guarantee security and quality of service.

Managed service providers will step in to offer these services, taking care of security, quality of service and other issues, Brown said after his address. "Nash's equilibrium is one way," he said. "We've got to figure out ways to discover the right pricing and the right incentives. We're not there yet."

Other speakers at the CTO Forum said the efficiency promised by Web services will be welcome change from the complexity of current IT models.

"The current business model is broken," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of San Francisco-based Salesforce.com. "We need to break through [to reach] ease of use."

Andre Garcia, vice president of enterprise technology for North America for JP Morgan Chase & Co. of San Francisco, said corporations are waiting to see the advances of Web services.

"We still have to see the business value to see if it helps corporations compete and offer better service to customers," he said.

Jack McCarthy is an InfoWorld associate news editor.