Bangkok--Aug 31--Hill & Knowlton
Background
The Office of Computer Clustering Promotion (CCP) under the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) has collaborated with Microsoft (Thailand) Co. Ltd. to establish a Web Services Architecture Center (WSAC). Located on the third floor of the Innovation Cluster I Building, Thailand Science Park, the WSAC will play a significant role in the support and promotion of .Net Web services architecture knowledge as well as the development and promotion of Thai software developers.
WSAC Mission
WSAC aims to be the center of Web services architecture for Microsoft’s .Net technology and software design excellence. Its mission is to leverage Thai IT professional ability in the development of globally-acclaimed .Net Web services. The Center will coordinate activities between the CCP, the IT industry and Microsoft in the promotion of software architecture and software design in an effort to develop highly-reliable, globally-standardized Web services based on Microsoft’s .Net.
Under the agreement WSAC will:
- Study and publish academic papers on .Net Web services architecture and software design
- Initiate proof-of-concept projects in collaboration with the CCP, the IT industry and Microsoft, relying on cutting-edge technologies to develop highly sophisticated business work and service systems
- Give advice to IT operators about .Net Web services architecture and software design
- Co-operate with Microsoft in creating training courses for .Net Web services architecture and software design
- Collaborate with Microsoft in the certification of IT professionals, under the title of “Microsoft Certified Architects”
- Create a Web portal based on Microsoft technology to encourage knowledge interchange and online discussion on software architecture and design
- Host and promote joint activities among Thai software architects. These will include training and certification guidance, the Thailand/APAC Architect Forum seminar, monthly meetings of .Net Web Services SIG (Special Interest Group) to interchange and spread knowledge and the experiences of Web services veterans and newcomers
- Run an open software architecture clinic, providing advice and solutions to work and service systems related to .Net Web services for the public and private sector
WSAC Activities in the first year (2005-2006) will include:
- Holding both admission and admission-free training courses for .Net Web services architecture and software design for 500 IT persons
- Holding at least two 1-day seminars on Web services architecture using .Net technology with around 300 participants each
- A monthly meeting for .Net Web services SIG (Special Interest Group), with around 80 participants each time
- At least 7 permanent staff dedicated to the WSAC who are professionals on .Net Web services architecture and software design, with at least 2 Microsoft Certified Architects
- Creating a Web portal based on Microsoft technology to promote .Net Web services architecture and software design activities
- Developing at least 3 IT projects using Microsoft’s .Net Web services technology
- Developing at least 2 proof-of-concept projects together with the CCP, the IT industry and Microsoft
- Giving advice to at least 4 IT operators about .Net Web services architecture and software design
- Open at least 10 software architecture clinics, providing advice and solutions to work and service systems related to .Net Web services for public and private sectors
- Publish at least 2 academic papers on .Net Web services architecture for and software design
WSAC Location
The Office of Computer Clustering Promotion (CCP)
the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA)
131 Thailand Science Park
3rd floor, Innovation Cluster I Building
Phahon Yothin Road, Klong Luang
Pathumthani 12120, Thailand
Contact Person: Khun Maneerat Boonphromon
Tel: 0-2564-7206
Fax: 0-2564-7203
e-mail: [email protected]
Microsoft in Thailand
Microsoft’s mission
Our aim is to empower Thai people and businesses with great software to help them realize their full potential. In Thailand, we follow four key guiding principles:
- Lifelong learning is the foundation of our strategy. Technology changes almost by the day and key to maintaining a healthy software industry is having trained people who understand how IT works. We are not talking here just about highly trained software developers, but also ensuring that every-day Thai people know how to use technology to further themselves. In Thailand, Microsoft is committed to Lifelong learning in ICT, working with the Thai Government on empowering citizens and contributing towards future progress of the country. As of June 2005, we have trained over 10,000 teachers and 422,000 students in ICT skills with thousands more planned for this year. We have also trained teachers to become ICT trainers and set up pilot training centers in four locations around Thailand. It is all about empowering people through technology by providing the skills they need. Bill’s announcement will provide PCs across the country with discounted software, link teachers with their peers around the world, help digitize educational texts for online learning and create an e-Learning portal — all to promote lifelong learning.
- Building the Software ecosystem is all about driving wealth and jobs for the entire country. Clearly, as the trained students move into the workforce, their skills will be used to build this industry. This area includes our partners and the developers we work with. In 2004, we worked with over 2,000 partners and helped to train thousands of developers. Bill’s announcements in Thailand will help to equip and train hundreds of thousands more students and 69,000 developers and ISVs as well as providing tools and skills to open the domestic market to international customers, thereby creating a true software eco-system that will contribute to the Thai economy and individual living standards within the country.
- Integrated innovation is about linking up systems and applications to ensure companies reach maximum productivity. Once students and developers have competent skills in web services, we hope they will develop advanced applications in web services to export throughout the world. Integrated innovation, of course, stretches into all walks of life, including e-Government and the Private sector. In Thailand, Microsoft helps companies everyday to link their people, systems and information together in intelligent ways. Through Thailand.Net, Microsoft will help the government create a ‘Web Services Super Hub’ to be exported abroad and help the Thai government integrate its information, departments and people for the good of the Thai citizen.
- Driving Business Value deals with helping Thai companies, and Thailand as a whole, by demonstrating the true potential of software and the incremental value it provides to the bottom line. This is essential as many companies, and even economies, do not realize how software can increase productivity while driving down costs and driving up profits. We have invested heavily in the business productivity centre in Thailand, for example, and recently opened a partner office in Chiang Mai to help explain the true value software can provide. Through Microsoft’s software, companies are seeing considerable gains to their bottom lines. For example Thai Airways saved 40 million on their annual software budget. Once the projects announced by Bill Gates are up and running, we believe that all the threads will come together to drive business value for Thai businesses, the Thai citizen and the economy as a whole.
What is .Net?
.NET is the Microsoft Web services strategy to connect information, people, systems, and devices through software. Integrated across the Microsoft platform, .NET technology provides the ability to quickly build, deploy, manage, and use connected, security-enhanced solutions with Web services. .NET-connected solutions enable businesses to integrate their systems more rapidly and in a more agile manner and help them realize the promise of information anytime, anywhere, on any device.
The Microsoft platform includes everything a business needs to develop and deploy a Web service-connected IT architecture: servers to host Web services, development tools to create them, applications to use them, and a worldwide network of more than 35,000 Microsoft Certified Partner organizations to provide any help you need.
What Are Web Services?
If you ask a developer what Web services are, you'll hear something like, "self-describing software modules, semantically encapsulating discrete functionality, wrapped in and accessible via standard Internet communication protocols like XML and SOAP."
But if you ask a business leader who has implemented Web service-based solutions, you'll get a different kind of answer. You'll hear that Web services are an approach that helps the business connect with its customers, partners, and employees. They enable the business to extend existing services to new customers. They help the business work more efficiently with its partners and suppliers. They unlock information so it can flow to every employee who needs it. They reduce development time and expense for new projects. You'll hear less about what Web services are and more about what they enable the business to do.
Benefits of Web Services
By enabling applications to share data across different hardware platforms and operating systems, Web services provide many benefits, including:
- Opening the door to new business opportunities by making it easy to connect with partners.
- Delivering dramatically more personal, integrated experiences to users through the new breed of smart devices—including PCs.
- Saving time and money by cutting development time.
- Increasing revenue streams by enabling businesses to easily make their own Web services available to others.
Connecting Applications Through Web Services
Web services are revolutionizing how applications talk to other applications—or, more broadly, how computers talk to other computers—by providing a universal data format that lets data be easily adapted or transformed. Based on XML, the universal language of Internet data exchange, Web services can communicate across platforms and operating systems, regardless of the programming language in which the applications are written.
Each Web service is a discrete unit of code that handles a limited set of tasks. However, although Web services remain independent of each other, they can loosely link themselves into a collaborating group that performs a particular task.
Web services example: Your Inventory System
Say you have a stand-alone inventory system. If you don't connect it to anything else, it's not as valuable as it could be. The system can track inventory, but not much more. You may have to enter inventory information twice—once in your accounting system and once in your customer relationship management system. The inventory system may be unable to automatically place orders to suppliers. The benefits of such an inventory system are diminished by high overhead costs.
However, if you connect your inventory system to your accounting system, it gets more interesting. Now, whenever you buy or sell something, the implications for your inventory and your cash flow can be tracked in one step. If you go further, and connect your warehouse management system, customer ordering system, supplier ordering systems, and your shipping company, suddenly that inventory management system is worth a lot. You can do end-to-end management of your business while dealing with each transaction only once, instead of once for every system it affects. That's a lot less work—and a lot less opportunity for errors.
These connections can be made easily using Web services. Web services allow the applications to share information through the Internet, regardless of the operating system or back-end software that the application is using.
Web Services Use Industry-Standard Protocols
Web services also make it possible for developers to choose between building all pieces of their applications, or consuming (using) Web services created by others. This means that an individual company doesn't have to supply every piece for a complete solution. The ability to expose (announce and offer) your own Web services creates new revenue streams for your company.
Web services are invoked over the Internet by means of industry-standard protocols including SOAP; XML; and Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI). They are defined through public standards organizations such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
SOAP is an XML-based messaging technology standardized by the W3C, which specifies all the necessary rules for locating Web services, integrating them into applications, and communicating between them. UDDI is a public registry, offered at no cost, where one can publish and inquire about Web services. End.