UDDI: An Alternative To EDI

Using UDDI is much easier and cheaper than using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which was an attempt at B2B but didn't become truly pervasive because it was too expensive for any but the largest companies. "It was an improvement over calling someone on the phone, but it tends to be expensive," says Bob Sutor, director of e-business standards strategies at IBM.

A fan of UDDI, Sutor says the technology has clear advantages. "If you look at the way businesses are connecting to each other, at best people are connecting in an ad-hoc way," he says. "There are lots of ways for businesses to talk to each other. EDI can do that, but not every company uses it. EDI is not based on XML, which means your software to support it is much more expensive. UDDI offers freedom of message construction and delivery EDI doesn't give you."

There's also the benefit of a standard set of protocols as opposed to a proprietary messaging solution, like IBM's MQSeries. "The financial industry doesn't want to bet its livelihood on one vendor for messaging," says Sam Johnson, president of New York-basedTransactTools, a developer of B2B directory services for the financial sector. "It's betting on standards for protocols."

Plus, Johnson says, you can't get an industry like the financial services market to agree to standardize on one platform. "They have too much invested in their systems, and they have too many proprietary ideas on how they like to do business," he says.