Out of the Box: Strategies for Achieving Profits Today and Growth Tomorrow Through Web Services

If you're like me and spend a lot of time with techies and read lots of tech journals, you're well familar with the "nuts and bolts" of how web services work. "Out Of The Box", however, takes a decidedly different approach, exploring not only what web services are, but also how they came to be, and where they're going.John Hagel's observations are generally high-level and strategic, exploring the ways that web services can change how businesses operate and interact with one another. Hegel's thesis is that web services have the power to transform the fundamental ways in which business is conducted, removing many of the barriers and problems in information management, and allowing business relationships to form and dissolve more rapidly than ever before. As a result, wholly new business models can emerge that allow businesses to respond to changes in customer preferences, compensate for new economic or political realities, and make continuous improvements in quality and value.A highly readable work, just about the book's only weakness is that it is indeed based largely on conjecture, and the premise that today's web service protocols will form the foundation of long-term IT development. Anyone even remotely familiar with IT knows that change can be sudden and dramatic. However, Hagel presents a lot of sound and creative thinking that is especially helpful for an emerging technology such as web services."Out Of The Box" should be essential reading for any manager or executive whose job involves implementation of web services at any level. By contrast, techies will find this book sorely lacking in specifics. But that's okay, as there are a host of other books by O'Reilly and other technical publishers that do an excellent job of "drilling down" into the details of the technology.

This book did the best job of anything I've read in describing what web services is, the history behind it and what it means for businesses.

Don't read this book because you expect everything John Hagel says is right or will become true, (they're not, and they won't), but because John has articulately presented the business potential of web services. I disagree with "a reader from New York" and Thomas Noyes regarding the future of web services--they're very real. (I guess I'm speaking to a different subset of the Fortune 100 CIOs.) True, not all web-services projects are in production (yet), but they're coming.John has become one of the most influential business/technology strategists of the dot-com-and-beyond era. He's always a few steps ahead of the rest of us, and he gets us thinking. He straddles the line between strategist and futurist, and he's good at both roles. But the reader's challenge is to separate the solid strategy from the hypothetical futurism. It's often hard to find the boundaries in John's books, and the latest is no exception. In fact, the subtitle warns us to expect it: Out of the Box--Strategies for Achieving Profits Today and Growth Tomorrow through Web Services. I don't agree with everything John writes, but this book contains far more to agree with than not, including some gems. Here are four of my favorite quotes:*** With regard to process-reengineering proponents..."their end-to-end view usually stopped at the edge of the enterprise. More enlightened proponents would occasionally include direct business partners of the enterprise. None expanded the notion of end-to-end to include the entire value chain..."*** "The high cost of complexity was the dark side of the much-touted network-effect business models on the Internet...Due to the n-squared problem operating costs were also rising exponentially as more participants joined."*** "Whenever a company decides to outsource a business process, the process becomes part of the edge of the enterprise." *** "...most of the economic value of a business is concentrated in the processes that surround a transaction, rather than in the transaction itself."In Out of the Box, John Hagel continues his string of stimulating writings. This is his best book to date, and because it's not specific to the world of e-commerce--or perhaps because e-commerce now is the world--this is the book I suspect will appeal to the broadest audience.

Co-author of two previous bestsellers (Net Gain and Net Worth), Hagel has now written what I expect to be his most influential work thus far. In it, he identifies and then discusses "strategies for achieving profits today and growth tomorrow through Web services." First, I want to express my admiration of the Foreword which John Seely Brown provides. Unlike most other such introductions, it offers substantial benefits of its own to the careful reader in addition to "setting the table" for the "banquet" which Hagel serves. I agree with Brown that decision-makers in all organizations (regardless of size or nature) must break out of the mental models and other barriers which hold them back. As he correctly observes, "The challenge for all of us over time will be to develop a deeper understanding of the practices required to create and capture even more economic value." It is indeed a formidable challenge to overcome what Jim O'Toole once characterized as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." I also agree with Brown that Hagel provides in this book both the counsel and inspiration to do so effectively.It is important to keep in mind that Hagel views technology as a means by which to increase the effectiveness of a given strategy. That is to say, a commitment to providing Web services should be driven by an appropriate strategy. At a time when change is the only constant, when those involved in a competitive marketplace must (in effect) thrive to survive, the importance of having an effective strategy is incalculable. I agree with Hagel that one of the most important lessons learned since the 1980s is that "information technology is at best a catalyst and an enabler. It is never an answer in itself." Nor could it be. For non-technologists such as I, Hagel carefully explains "how a new generation of IT and related architectures -- known generally as Web services technology and distributed service architectures -- will provide a significant catalyst in helping management break out of the [four] boxes that confine it": (1) financial performance pressures, (2) enterprise infrastructures, (3) enterprise boundaries, and (4) mental models. "The real value [of avoiding or breaking out of these boxes] is the increased capability of business managers for flexibility and collaboration -- capabilities that can in turn produce significant operating savings and growth options across the entire business." The material is organized as follows:Part I: Finding Flexibility (i.e. how to identify and then respond to unmet needs, how and why Web services create new options, how and why Application Service Providers made a "false start")Part II: Finding Near-Term Profitability (i.e. what a "pragmatic adoption" of Web services and "moving from the edge to the core" involves)Part III: Creating Focus (i.e. how process networks create value through specialization, and, why it is necessary to "unbundle" inorder to "rebundle" core business processes)Part IV: Acce

John Hagel has written the book we have been waiting for. For years now, we have heard escalating hype around Web services technology from every vendor under the sun (no pun intended). John provides a clear-headed perspective to combat all the hype. Rather than focusing on the claims of the technology vendors, John takes the refreshing path of looking to find out what early adopters are actually doing with the technology in real business environments. The results are surprising and contradict much of the "conventional wisdom" that we hear in the press regarding Web services. By focusing on these early adopters, John develops a compelling business case for deployment of Web services technology today - it offers the potential of delivering real operating savings with relatively modest investment and short (six to twelve month) lead-times. He provides a balanced perspective of both the opportunities and the limitations of the technology.This is a book targeted to the non-technology executive, but it also has enormous insight for technology executives. Again, by focusing on early adopter experience, John identifies some key missing ingredients in the Web services technology arsenal. In particular, his concept of a service grid will prove to be essential in accelerating adoption of the technology. This represents a significant business opportunity for technology vendors who understand and address the unmet needs of users.But John's book is a lot more than a book on the business implications of a specific technology. In the end, it is a deeply insightful book on business strategy. He argues that we will need to develop a very different set of business practices in terms of operations, organization and strategy to succeed in markets characterized by intensifying competition. While he helps us to understand profound changes on the horizon, he also is clear that they will not occur overnight. Particularly intriguing is his emphasis on rapid incrementalism, guided by clear operational milestones, as an antidote to the "big bang" change philosophies of the recent past. This is a book that should be on every managers bookshelf, but only after they have read it and internalized it from cover to cover....