The potential of Web services
Web services allow IT departments to make a legacy mainframe application available not only to the entire organization, but also to a global customer and partner base of millions. The Web service's ability to provide one service for multiple front-end types of clients -- end-users via the Web site, in-house application, or cross-organization solution -- allows more rapid development of changes to the mainframe application that are available to a broad range of users. The Web service's ability to invoke other Web services such as security, business compliance, and personalization, makes the mainframe application more feature-rich. Web service information, stored in a repository, gives administrators a common software-asset information base to monitor and troubleshoot the enhanced mainframe applications.
