Web Services For Devices...

[James Blaisdell <james@mocana.com>]

This working group needs to leverage existing work that is being
conducted within OASIS and other standards initiatives, bringing them all
together and applying them to devices. There are positive movements
around event driven communications in heterogeneous environments, web
services orchestration, composite applications and security that can all
be built upon. We need to refine and understand the implications of these
"enterprise" services application to the emerging (often
resource limited) device network. Over time devices will become more
powerful, but we need to forge a path between the here and now, and
distant future. 

The use of networked devices is growing at a lightning pace, driven by
the need for OEM's, service providers and customers to add functionality,
differentiate products and take cost out of post sales customer support
functions. There is also an emergence of several classes of devices that
can all benefit from the output of this working group. This market can be
portrayed by the following matrix;

- Display centric devices: These are devices that rely on a display Eg.
PDA's, HDTV
- Headless Devices: These are devices without a display. Eg. Switches and
routers
- Fixed Position Devices: These are devices that do Eg. MRI machine
- Mobile Devices: These are devices that change location Eg. Delivery
truck, pallets, mobile phones

The problem today is that the majority of the software for devices is
proprietary. This results in tightly integrated systems that do not
interoperate. To applications developers, the result is a heterogeneous
and fragmented market. It has also forced the use of sub optimal
components like embedded web servers which do not work well for device
centric use scenarios (eg. provisioning, ordering etc.) that will drive
real economic value for OEMs, service providers and customers.

Through this working group it is possible to define a set of standards
that can be applied across all device classes that will allow for
services to be exposed in a standard way and for 'any to any' and secure
communications to take place in a loosely coupled world. This will
benefit all industry participants, OEM's, networking companies, service
providers and embedded systems software companies. OEM's will be able to
add value added services, with built in greater customer care for end
users. Networking companies hardware will act as natural device hubs.
Service providers will be able to leverage 3rd party services, and add
new service offerings. Embedded systems software vendors will be able to
create out of the box solutions that offer total customizability and
manageability. And finally, end-customers will greatly benefit from more
flexible and customizable solutions. 

Let me know what you think and what other standards initiatives we should
be leveraging here.

James Blaisdell
CTO, Mocana Corporation
Chair - OASIS Web Services for Devices Discussion List