And can there be a better weave to the web?

These questions have become crucial to those who have tied their fortunes to seeing their business grow via the e-commerce route. The dawn of the internet has seen a significant shift in terms of the technology. Gone are the days when a single technology decided how the bytes were moved across. It is a free world and there is no stopping any one to launch as many technology platforms as their skill in not only designing architecture, but even inventing new bricks that go to build that architecture.

TCP/IP, HTML and XML are the current technologies and are independent of any underlying platform, language, object model, business application or marketplace.

But while the software engineers work at their score skills sharpening new technologies, there is an ever pressing need at the macro level to designs ways of enabling a system, which will be able to bridge across offerings and services at the internet space irrespective of individual technologies.It is recognition of this need that thirty six companies have come together to cooperate to further the growth of internet commerce, via standards for web services.

At the beginning of September, this year they launched the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) Project, a cross-industry initiative designed to accelerate and broaden business-to-business integration and commerce on the Internet.

The participating companies are American Express Co, Andersen Consulting, Ariba Inc, Bowstreet, Cargill Inc, Clarus Corp, Commerce One Inc, CommerceQuest Inc, Compaq Computer Corp, CrossWorlds Software Inc, Dell Computer Corp, Descartes, Extricity Software Inc, Fujitsu Ltd, Great Plains, i2, IBM Corp, Internet Capital Group, Loudcloud Inc, match21, Merrill Lynch & Co Inc., Microsoft Corp, NEON, Nortel Networks Corp, NTT Communications Corp, Rational Software Corp, RealNames Corp, Sabre Holdings Corp, SAP AG, Sun Microsystems Inc, TIBCO Software Inc, Ventro Corp, Versata Inc, VeriSign, VerticalNet Inc and webMethods Inc are the first to endorse the new effort. Who knows many more may join in days to come.

There is a need to face the challenge in scaling the offerings out there in the web space to universal adoption. Such an adoption is possible only when the issue of multitude of technologies and standards used by business and e-marketplace is taken up in an all embracing solution to make global e-commerce acquire even more biting teeth.

UDDI will to adopt a two pronged approach to meet these challenges by providing the following: First, UDDI defines a platform-neutral set of specifications to enable businesses to describe themselves and indicate their preferred means of conducting e-commerce transactions. Second, UDDI includes the shared operation of a globally distributed UDDI Business Registry. Through the UDDI Business Registry, companies publish information describing how they conduct commerce and search for other businesses that provide the capabilities, Web services or products they need. The goal of the UDDI Project is to offer the basic infrastructure for dynamic, automated integration of all e-commerce transactions and Web services. In the early days of development of e-commerce, HTML had created certain impact for consumers on the internet by providing a common web site publishing format. This is what really fuelled the Internet explosion.

Now that newer technologies have evolved, there is need for to address the new challenge, so that the efficiency of the web world does not get fragmented but builds in more synergies.

UDDI aims to make business-to-business commerce adoption universal by providing businesses with a common mechanism to publish Web services on the Internet.

UDDI-enabled applications will enable marketplaces, application service providers (ASPs) and individual businesses to dynamically define the services they offer over the Web, publish those services in the UDDI Business Registry. UDDI will also make it possible to utilise the registry and connect with features of scalability so as to access millions of other businesses globally. The UDDI Project is an open industry initiative in which any organization can participate and implement the specifications.

The specifications build on core Internet standards - including TCP/IP, HTML and XML - and are independent of any underlying platform, language, object model, business application or marketplace.

It is the intention of the UDDI members to transition the specifications to an industry standards body in the next 18 months. The UDDI specification facilitates the integration of Web services by creating a standard means for describing services and e-business processes and placing them on an open, universally accessible registry.

The UDDI Business Registry and UDDI specifications will benefit any company or organization with access to the Internet, from the smallest home-based business to Fortune 500 companies.