Companies such as FedEx already provide Web pages that perform this type of calculation, but they require lots of manual user input. Using a SOAP-enabled routine call, application developers could, as mentioned, embed highly integrated program calls whenever the shipping price is needed in the application. Not so long ago, we worried about and worked hard at integrating heterogeneous platforms within our enterprises. Today, the Web looms as the mechanism to integrate our business processes with those of other businesses. The B2B relationships needed for the Web require an IT department capable of developing the new kind of applications needed for the third and fourth stages.
Modern applications have to be closely integrated with the Web.
This doesn't mean, however, that application developers will have to become systems programmers, creating all of the needed plumbing required for this to happen. For a successful Web presence, you can't simply push the development process off as a specialty task. The Web is no longer a specialty, it's a core part of your business and a core part of your development team's responsibility. Today, the Web looms as the mechanism to integrate our business processes with those of other businesses. BE LEFT OUT Think of Wal-Mart and its use of EDI in the 1990s.