Web services security standard launched

THE room full of engineers known as the Web Services Interoperability Organisation (aka WS-I) has published its long-awaited WS-I Basic Security Profile 1.0 material for public access.

WS-I is the global, open industry organisation whose members promote Web services interoperability across different vendor’s platform, operating systems and programming languages.

It’s a pointy-headed collective that makes sure the world’s computer systems are built so they can talk to each other. Its members are battle-hardened engineers who understand precisely how bloody fights between corporations over standards can get.

And ultimately the agreements made within the rooms of WS-I save corporate and government users countless millions globally, and allow coherent and workable new services and conveniences to be delivered to end-users. Statues should be built.

“Publishing the WS-I Basic Security Profile 1.0 is a major step toward achieving WS I’s objective of advancing interoperability for secure Web services,” WS-I chairman and president Michael Bechauf said in a statement.

“I congratulate the many WS-I members who have worked to make BSP 1.0 a reality,” Mr Bechauf said.

The WS-I BSP 1.0 is an essential guide for ensuring secure, interoperable Web services.

The WS-I Board approved BSP 1.0 after receiving confirmation that five members – IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle and SAP – demonstrated interoperability. Following Board approval, the document was submitted to WSI's membership, who voted to approve BSP 1.0.

“Security is a concern to any organisation operating in the Web services sphere,” said the BSP Working Group chairman, Paul Cotton.

“The WS-I Basic Security Profile 1.0 provides a strong foundation for the development of secure, yet interoperable Web services. We in the Working Group are now working on BSP 1.1, which builds upon that strong foundation.”

The WS-I Basic Security Profile addresses transport security, SOAP messaging security and other security considerations for WS-I Basic Profile 1.1, Simple SOAP Binding Profile 1.0 and Attachments Profile 1.0.

Specifically, the BSP1.0 focuses on the interoperability characteristics of two technologies: HTTP over TLS and Web Services Security: SOAP Message Security.

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SOA spend soars as users seek flexibility

THE service oriented architecture (SOA) market will grow 40 per cent in the Asia-Pacific over the next two years as organisations seek more flexible business processes from the enterprise integration programs.

Research group Frost & Sullivan said SOA technologies had matured, with all major software vendors had been altering and creating software to suit the needs of an SOA framework, making the architecture a viable goal.

“The Asia-Pacific SOA market is poised for healthy growth as large enterprises across all verticals are adopting SOA-based solutions for their business related issues,” Frost & Sullivan research analyst Harikrishna Subramanian said.

“SOA offers solutions that optimize current business processes and efficiently plan future software adoptions of enterprises that are looking for continuous process improvement with clear visibility of the processes,” Mr Subramanian said.

Frost & Sullivan says large enterprises want to build more coherent IT infrastructure, driving demand for SOA. The potential for problems with enterprise IT projects tended to increase depending on the length of time since the organisation’s first IOT deployment, the number of software modules and size off the enterprise.

The increased complexity of software modules had increased the cost of implementing enterprise IT, the Frost report says, with SOA offering companies a way to reduce cost.

The report says the much greater penetration of Web services among enterprises in the Asia Pacific was also encouraging SOA deployment.

However, Frost & Sullivan says the low awareness of SOA and its potential benefits for an organisation had hampered market growth.

“Enterprises are shying away from implementing full-fledged SOA-based solutions mainly due to limited IT budget and time constraints. Vendors must focus on educating clients about the benefits of SOA and showcase best practices in order to draw up an efficient roadmap for SOA implementation,” the report said.

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ATO opens eTax to non-Microsoft platforms

LINUX and Macintosh users will soon be able to file their tax returns online – just as Microsoft users have for a decade – as the ATO revamps its eTax system to make it platform agnostic.

Tax Commissioner Michael D’Ascenzo said for the second year running more people filed their tax returns electronically than with paper.

More than 1.6 million people lodged online, Mr D’Ascenzo said, 75 per cent of them repeat users from the previous year.

And all of them were Windows users, because since the ATO started trialling eTax in 1997, the system has only been available for Windows users.

Mr D’Ascenzo said the ATO would over the next two years completely revamp the eTax platform, adding more functionality and making it accessible to anyone with access to the Internet.

The revamp is being carried out by IBM under a $4.4 million contract awarded to the company last December.

“Looking even further ahead we will redevelop e-tax to make it compatible with any computer system that has internet access,” Mr D’Ascenzo.

“We will test this with a small group of users in 2008, aiming to make it available more broadly in future years – pending the success of the trials.”

Mr D’Ascenzo said the eTax system had been expanded for this financial year to include an enhanced ability to download information from third-party sources. This will include more than 20 banks for interest data, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs to assess pension payments, the Department of Eduction to assess allowances and Medicare for out of pocket medical expenses.

ETax users have already been able to download information from Centrelink, Medicare Australia, the Family Assistance Office.

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NICTA speeds loan approvals

AUSTRALIA’S peak information technology research body NICTA has joined with the private sector to co-develop a set of XML web services for the financial services industry.

NICTA and the private sector Lending Industry XML Initiative (LIXI) has launched a set of protocols they say could see the valuation stage of a home loan application reduce from two days to just two hours.

For the past five years, the not-for-profit LIXI group has worked to develop ecommerce standards for online processing and administering home loan information using a Credit Application Language (CAL).

LIXI’s collaboration with NICTA has aimed to improve interoperability through ecommerce standards for business processes by incorporating CAL and web service technologies.

LIXI chief executive Socrates Vasiliadis, CEO, LIXI, valuation is an area where the industry was expressing confusion and it was a relatively self-contained problem that a set of standards could address.

“The industry confusion stemmed from a lack of formally documented, standard processes where similar software was written for the same problem,” Mr Vasiliadis said.

“Not only will this development reduce technology costs for the valuer community, it will also offer improved efficiency and better relationships with lenders.”

The collaboration, called the Business Process Working Group, includes representatives of NICTA and LIXI, which incorporates all the major participants in the Australian lending industry.

NICTA Empirical Software Engineering (ESE) program executive Paul Mackie said having the standard vocabulary is not sufficient to guarantee ebusiness interoperability between so many participants in the industry.

“The goal is for all parties to be able to communicate easily with each other, and have the means to evolve without re-engineering interfaces for each new participant they do business with,” Mr Mackie said.

“To get to that point the industry needs a reference architecture and the standard guidelines on how to implement the technology,” he said.

Plans are underway for NICTA and LIXI to prepare reference architectures for other lending processes, such as the circulation of loan product information from lenders to the many thousands of mortgage brokers in the industry.

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ATO online apps hit by Vista problems

JUST as the nation’s top tax collector Michael D’Ascenzo announced aggressive new targets to get people to lodge returns electronics, the Australian Taxation Office says it has been hit by Microsoft Windows Vista compatibility problems.

The ATO has been one of the most advanced Federal departments in developing and deploying web applications and web services to simplify tax compliance for both individuals and businesses – largely through its $450 million Change Program.

Last year, 90 per cent of taxpayers lodged returns electronically, and as Tax Commissioner Mr D’Ascenzo had set a target for this year of boosting electronic returns to 95 per cent of taxpayers.

But the target – set last month – has already been given a setback with the ATO reporting a series of problems for both individual taxpayers and businesses in getting Microsoft’s new Windows Vista applications to work with its back office systems.

The Vista problems are ironic for the ATO, which has worked hand-in-glove with Microsoft on its online services and web services back-end systems for the past five years.

The ATO was one of the first major users to throw its weight behind Microsoft’s .NET architecture as a Beta customer, and Microsoft used Tax as a global reference site in the early days of .Net release.

The ATO has now published the Vista problems on its website. The problems relate largely to accessing and updating electronic forms.

The ATO said:
· electronic forms are placed in a temporary location and will be automatically erased by Windows Vista. This means the user could lose all of their saved electronic forms
· The ATO record-keeping evaluation tool can still be used with Vista, but users will be unable to access the help application,
· The personal tax record keep will work with Vista, but only with reduced useability – and some text can become scrambled
· When using the facilitated lodgement tools with Vista the users’ portal activity statement will not be pre-populated with their information.

The ATO has issued work-arounds for most of the problems and said that Microsoft had been made aware of the issues.

Despite the issues, Mr D’Ascenzo told a conference of tax specialists at Queensland University last month that the Change Program was on track, and that the change program Release 2 work – where it implemented Siebel Case Management and Work Management systems had been a resounding success.

The ATO’s independent assurer Cap Gemini said the project was the largest Siebel case management roll out anywhere in the world.

“This has been a major undertaking,” Mr D’Ascenzo said.

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