Today, Hess continues his work helping the developer community create great applications for Microsoft's system platforms in Microsoft's Platform Strategy Group. Web services are very small, reusable application components that can be shared seamlessly among Web sites as services. Many organizations already subscribe to the Microsoft Passport Services user identity Web service. Microsoft is creating a portfolio of building block Web services. This interview with Robert Hess, Group Manager for Microsoft's Platform Strategy Group, explores what Web services are and how they could fit into an organization's strategy for developing their business on the Web.
Web services are analogous, it seems, to business services.
Most companies already outsource aspects of their business process that are not their core competencies, such as shipping and materials handling. Web services are a way for developers, in a sense, to outsource development of certain services they use all the time, like authentication, the same way a corporation might outsource shipping. You aren't forced to build a Fed Ex truck, and put a Fed Ex uniform on one of your employees, and drive around looking like a Fed Ex guy just to get the stuff going on. And you can leverage the talent that you have within your organization to focus on their own mission-critical pieces. We're actually saving their time in two different ways.