B2B Registry Supports Web Services

Microsoft, Ariba, and IBM have founded the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) initiative, an electronic business registry. The registry will consolidate information about Internet business-to-business (B2B) applications, and will make it easier to link an application at one company to an application at another, for the purpose of exchanging business data such as purchase orders, invoices, and requests for price and catalog information. The registry project also reflects a stronger Microsoft-IBM collaboration that could speed Microsoft’s plan to deliver software as Web services.

Getting Information Needed for B2B

The UDDI project attacks a problem that arises when integrating applications for B2B commerce: collecting and maintaining current information about the companies involved. For example, suppose two companies, a buyer and a seller, want to automate purchasing by enabling the buyer to submit purchase orders to the seller and enabling the seller to send invoices to the buyer. To set up the relationship, administrators need to collect and maintain the following information: