CATEGORY

Businesses have come to realize that information resources and technologies are key corporate assets and decisions on these matters need to be made at the highest level in an enterprise (including public sector and not-for-profit organizations). As a result, when new standards come along with the potential for expanding collaborative e-business relationships that open new opportunities, improve cash flow, and reduce costs, business people need to know about them. That is the purpose of the new book, ebXML: the New Global Standard for doing Business On the Internet. The book describes this new set of specifications not only in terms of the technology, but also in terms of their impact on the way business really work.

Most of the larger enterprises in the world have done e-business for as long as 20 years, using a technology called electronic data interchange or EDI. While these larger companies have benefited from EDI, smaller companies rarely can afford the software or the internal management EDI requires. EbXML however, takes advantage of advances in Internet technologies and the large installed base of Internet-connected systems, to encourage the development of low-priced, plug-and-play solutions that many smaller companies can afford.

The book outlines the demanding and changing business conditions that make collaborative e-business imperative for growing numbers of companies, and show how ebXML is designed to meet these conditions. It offers an executive-level overview giving the ebXML specifications in a nutshell and scenarios of how ebXML can work in practice. The book then provides fuller descriptions of ebXMLs business requirements, XML, earlier work involving XML for business data exchange, related web services specifications, and more details of the ebXML technical architecture.

ebXML: the New Global Standard for doing Business On the Internet is the first book on ebXML, and the only extended work so far, either print or electronic, written for business managers. The technical documentation provides specific guidance for systems developers, but it is the business people who make the fundamental business decisions on using technology strategically, and this book addresses those concerns.