Most technologists say Web services will define the next phase of the Internet. But how do you know which services are available? Where can you find them? And who supplies them? These are questions that the Universal, Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) technology was supposed to answer.

Unfortunately, enthusiasm for UDDI has dampened considerably since the standard's creation a couple of years ago. "UDDI has basically fallen off the radarscope of most organizations looking to implement more advanced forms of business-to-business functionality," says Ken Vollmer, research director with the Giga Information Group.

Validation and security problems are mostly to blame. Public UDDI registries contain a lot of useless listings--some businesses in the directory don't exist, others link to the wrong sites. Many businesses listed in the directory have no plans to offer Web services or simply don't understand how to use the directory. Other businesses don't even remember registering in the first place. The diluted quality of the public registry makes it a poor bet for enterprises in search of solid services from reliable suppliers.

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The fact that public UDDI directories are accessible to anyone presents a security problem for large enterprises that don't want to do business with just anyone. Most companies don't want to expose carefully guarded information about their service offerings and business processes to competitors. What's more, suppliers set up to fulfill only big contracts from large enterprise customers can't afford to handle smaller customers. Also, to avoid expensive supply chain breakdowns, enterprise buyers have to be careful about the suppliers they work with.

One company--E2open--is attempting to solve these problems by creating the first private UDDI directory. E2open, which operates a consortia e-market serving major electronics companies, also runs a private directory--called the E2open Process Directory (E2PD). This private directory contains information such as trading partner profiles, IP addresses, services, and business processes. E2open's members--which include Mitsubishi Electric, Ricoh, Sanyo, and Sharp--use the directory as an integration hub and to find new suppliers based on their ability to provide available parts and meet service-level requirements.

The directory improves integration among E2open's trading partners by making it easier to discover and maintain business processes described in the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). "Today, a lot of people are describing a method with a WSDL, but they aren't putting it out there publicly," says Mark Schenecker, E2open's vice president of product management. "They don't use a directory. They just send the WSDL using e-mail, but they must send out an e-mail each time they make a change to the WSDL."

E2PD helps convert a wide variety of data formats and protocols for more than 2,000 trading partners. For example, the directory can convert a purchase order a buyer sends in RosettaNet format to the EDI format used by a supplier. This ability to convert data formats and protocols not only simplifies integration among large enterprises, but it also helps them enlist smaller suppliers that typically can't afford to handle complex integration tasks. (Small suppliers often handle orders solely by e-mail.) As small suppliers become more sophisticated and adopt standards such as RosettaNet, E2PD permits them to easily update formats.

Unlike the public UDDI registry, E2open provides the necessary security and validation for E2PD. The directory sits behind the firewall and members must conform to E2open's security standards to gain access to it. Individual trading partners can precisely control which members have access to the information they've stored in the directory.

When members join the E2open network, their information is validated during the membership process. As a result, members can be relatively sure that all the companies are reliable business partners. E2open is also making it easier to discover the right suppliers by adding more detailed information to the directory.

If E2open's experience is any indicator, private directories can help ease integration and will help speed the adoption of Web services in large enterprises. "We expect internal use of UDDI for services-oriented architecture to be big, important, and a very cool enabler of Web services," says Ted Schadler, Forrester's group director of research, who expects all the private hubs to adopt UDDI in 2003.

Enterprises should not write off UDDI as a whole on account of the security and validation problems presented by early public UDDI directories. Properly administered private UDDI directories are worth considering because they can help trading partners ease the challenges of business process integration so they work together more efficiently.

Do you think private UDDI directories have promise? Why or why not? E-mail Adrian or TalkBack below.

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