And despite the growing use of standards, there is still significant variation between different computer platforms and operating environments that increase the complexity of integration projects. Research commissioned last year by software developer OST Business Rules, showed, for example, that many leading financial institutions are spending as much as 75 percent of their IT budget on linking applications together. Average expenditure is estimated to be 60 percent. The electronic links, for example, between a Web site accepting an order and the supplier's order processing application and beyond must be entirely trustworthy and secure. The mechanisms to achieve this are not yet within the scope of Internet standards.
Efforts are under way to extend Internet standards to meet the demands of the extended supply chain.
HTTP and HTML are ideal for the information publishing applications the Web was designed for, but they do not include the mechanisms needed to support electronic business. XML helps to make data meaningful so it can be used in a business process. Data items, such as a customer account number for example, can carry definitions of themselves so that other applications can identify them and process them. XML has its limitations, however. It is not really a language in the accepted sense.