Web Infrastructure and Operations Key Issues

Transcription

1 Key Issues, R. Valdes Research Note 11 March 2003 Web Infrastructure and Operations Key Issues Web infrastructure and operations includes mature technologies as well as emerging protocols. Gartner's Key Issues are developed to help enterprises identify vendors, technologies and methods that best fit their Web site needs. Core Topic Internet Platforms and Web Services: Web Infrastructure and Operations Key Issues How will the Web infrastructure and operations management market evolve? What lessons will enterprises learn from high-performance Web sites? What technologies and trends will shape Web infrastructure and operations? What will be the best practices for Web infrastructure and operations? Despite the dot-com meltdown and subsequent economic downturn, the role played by Internet technologies in enterprise IT infrastructures continues to grow. As the economy swings back upward, Web site development, deployment and operations will gain importance in delivering business value from technology. An enterprise's Web infrastructure forms a key subset of the IT infrastructure, and provides the crucial platform for meeting many business requirements. Each of the major areas of IT activity system management, application integration, e-commerce and customer relationship management has gained a Web dimension. Despite years of technology evolution and maturation in the Web sector, enterprises must still navigate through tough choices related to designing, developing, deploying, maintaining and upgrading their Web site infrastructures. The usual challenges remain: how to use IT resources cost-effectively, how to manage risk in increasingly complex distributed architectures, what areas merit outsourcing and more. The following Key Issues serve as the foundation for Gartner's research on Web site infrastructure and operations in They are also created to help e-business unit managers, IT infrastructure managers and IT architects make the right choices in this market. How will the Web infrastructure and operations management market evolve? Several trends regarding the Internet infrastructure work at cross purposes. They include: Maturation and consensus: The basic elements of technology have matured. Web infrastructure vendors, Gartner Reproduction of this publication in any form without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Gartner shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The reader assumes sole responsibility for the selection of these materials to achieve its intended results. The opinions expressed herein are subject to change without notice.

2 systems integrators and customers have reached a consensus on at least the base-level architecture required to achieve a Web presence with high levels of scalability and availability. Systems integrators are poised to deliver "cookie cutter" configurations, and it often seems all a customer has to do is write a check. Requirements escalation: As one set of technologies becomes understood, customer demands increase (for example, moving up from basic search to personalized portals to e-commerce transactions to syndicated logic and rich, highly distributed Web applications). Platform consolidation: As technologies become well understood, they gravitate from point solutions available from pure-play vendors to integrated suites from platform vendors. There can be many vendors of point solutions, but less than a handful of them offer strategic platform choices. Early Web development languages and tools, such as PERL, Cold Fusion and proprietary languages, fade in the face of two major Web platform initiatives:.net and Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE). Increased heterogeneity: Even in the face of platform consolidation, new systems get layered on top of old. Platforms touted as end-all comprehensive solutions, such as.net and J2EE, must coexist and interoperate with previous generations. Few organizations possess the will, "stomach for risk" and budget to rip out and replace old systems with new modern architectures. This explosion of overlapping technologies makes the goal of "five nines" ( percent) availability more challenging. Blurring of boundaries: IT systems have evolved from being separate silos to a unified, common enterprise architecture that cross-pollinates and blends with systems from other organizations. Fine-grain interoperability across enterprises is still in the future, but looms closer with the advent of additions to the Web services suite of protocols. This Key Issue examines the evolution of the Web site infrastructure sector, covering not only technology, but also changing requirements, organizational structure and business strategy. What will be the best practices for Web infrastructure and operations? As technologies mature, best practices associated with the early stage technology must also evolve. Best practices associated with early stage technology have to do with managing technology risk, reducing vendor risk and ensuring proper return on 11 March

3 investment. These practices need to be supplemented by approaches that optimize cost, ensure interoperability and maintain a long-term strategy. As individual systems expand beyond their original "silos, " managers must deal with the trade-off between unification and interoperability that is, between establishing a single large system to which all existing systems are converted vs. a distributed architecture that relies on interoperability between constituent elements to create a single virtual entity. One example of this trade-off comes from the area of enterprise portals. Many organizations are considering a one-size-fits-all portal deployment. During 1999 and 2000, when portals were in their second generation, observers were entranced by the vision of a single-portal deployment that could satisfy a wide range of audiences, including employees, consumers, business partners and suppliers; in theory, all this would be accomplished by the "magic of personalization." Although personalization technology was up to the task, the portal framework was not flexible, scalable, secure or full-featured enough to span such a wide range of requirements. Portal technology has since matured, and the IT infrastructure has been built out to the point that it is, theoretically, possible to have a one-size-fits-all deployment. The major portal vendors can now point to satisfied customers that have deployed portals of all types (business-to-consumer, business-to-business and business-to-employee) in a single organization. However, it is still rare to have a single deployment that connects to these multiple audiences. The gating factor is no longer technology, but is governance and organizational structure. Having a one-size-fits-all portal deployment is a best practice if the governance structure is effective in deriving business value from the unified deployment. Most organizations do not have a mature enough governance model to take advantage of onesize-fits-all deployments. (An effective governance model allows requirements from all parts of the organization to be made known to the governing entity, which can then prioritize and allocate resources in an optimal manner, manage risk appropriately and enable successful implementation.) What lessons will enterprises learn from high-performance Web sites? Although the IT infrastructure for a large enterprise can be quite complex and function at very high levels of availability, its architecture can differ markedly from a "high performance" Web site. A high-performance Web site pushes the envelope of 11 March

4 today's technologies to deliver information to the largest feasible number of users. Such top-tier Web sites are often stand-alone business entities (for example, Yahoo, ebay and Google), rather than merely functioning as the Web channel for a brick-andmortar business. Creating high-performance Web sites requires an integrated approach that measures, balances and tunes all aspects of a site, from system architecture to information design to user interface design to the construction of individual pages. Managers must understand these principles to deal effectively with variable traffic loads, to evaluate emerging technologies and to get the most value out of their portal configurations. All site managers, including those who manage sites with modest loads, can benefit by understanding the issues surrounding highperformance, high-availability Web sites. What high-performance sites do today (for example, with content delivery networks) indicates what mainstream, or even lagging-edge sites, will eventually do. This applies not only to technologies, but also to best practices. For example, high-performance sites have developed contingency plans for dealing with traffic spikes that can be applicable to small and midsize sites. Unexpected surges in traffic volume can flood any site private enterprise, academia or government. An unforeseen event can swell public interest (for example, a company may have an unexpected hit product or face a product recall). What technologies and trends will shape Web infrastructure and operations? A number of technologies will shape the Web infrastructure sector. These include Web services, composite applications, syndicated logic and deep integration. In the near term, the technology initiative that will have the most impact on Web infrastructure and operations is the Web services suite of protocols. Web services are today a rudimentary, but effective, means of enabling heterogeneous systems to interoperate in a loosely coupled, coarse-grain fashion, through service invocations sent as XML messages over standard Internet transports. A suite of protocols allows one system: to discover resources provided by other connected systems Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI); to obtain specifics on how to invoke services Web Services Description Language (WSDL); and to make the service request via an XML-based message Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). 11 March

5 Web services can be viewed as a "poor man's" integration technology: lightweight, inexpensive and ubiquitously supported. Many efforts are under way to expand the scope of Web services to handle all aspects of creating rich, distributed Web applications. These efforts require protocols that address problems in transaction processing, workflow, security, quality of service, user interaction, trust management and profile management. Enterprises must choose between a "high road" or a "low road" approach to Web services deployments. The low road means sticking to the base-level protocols that are in place (WSDL, UDDI and SOAP) and looking for highvalue scenarios that fit within the constraints of these limited protocols. This may mean a large mass of proprietary code and data that can be exposed through a narrow request-andresponse interface. The high road is riskier and is taken when the application requirements go beyond coarse-grain interaction to include security, transactions, workflow, quality of service and user interaction. The high road means placing a calculated bet on where standardization efforts will end up, and designing for that endpoint. Developers must then hope that the final standard won t be too different from what they have implemented, and must be prepared to do at least a minimum amount of rework to bring their implementation into alignment. The pace of technology change in Web services is rapid, even in a tempered economic climate that favors pragmatism, cost-effectiveness and risk aversion. The Web services initiative is not the only technology wave that will impact Web infrastructure and operations. The vision of a new platform and new approach to building applications for the enterprise is taking shape. This new paradigm is known as composite applications, and a diverse assortment of vendors are espousing aspects of this vision. Examples include Asera, Bowstreet, SAP, WebCollage, Covigo, CrossWeave, firstrain and Digital Harbor. Composite applications predate Web services, but are evolving in concert with Web services. Composite applications blur the traditional dichotomy between tactical and strategic application development. They enable the construction of enterprise-scope applications at tactical speeds. Tactical development emphasizes opportunistic time frames, rapid construction using high-productivity tools, straightforward requirements and limited scope. Strategic development emphasizes doing a complex job correctly and systematically, with careful methodology 11 March

6 applied by a large team of skilled developers, at the expense of a large budget and extended time frame. Not all composite applications leverage portals; some rely on proprietary front ends or runtime environments. Portals are a natural fit, because they provide a starting point for development, with facilities for integration, user interface management and administration. The next phase is portals as a development platform for new applications that can leverage the capabilities provided by the portal. Composite applications will play an important role in this phase. Recommendations: Acronym Key J2EE SOAP UDDI WSDL Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition Simple Object Access Protocol Universal Description, Discovery and Integration Web Services Description Language Enterprises must: 1) establish organizational structures that bridge the dichotomy between mature technologies and emerging protocols; and 2) design budgets that strive for cost optimization in mature areas, while maintaining investments in emerging areas. IS managers must not underestimate the difficulty of a unified governance structure, because effective governance of Web infrastructure and applications is still an uncharted frontier for many enterprises. 11 March