www.nordstrom.com

If the Web Services Shoe Fits...

Retailer links three generations of systems to boost Web site sales.

At Nordstrom.com, a technology need inspired the company's use of Web services. The online arm of Nordstrom department stores calls itself "the world's largest shoe store", offering more than 20 million pairs online. Each time a customer orders a shoe, that order is sent to the shoe manufacturer via EDI, XML or e-mail messages. The result: orders move more quickly and smoothly than if Nordstrom had to keep all the shoes in stock, and customers benefit from a wide selection.

The online retailer wants to use Web services technology to communicate more than order and inventory information to its suppliers. Using Web services, Nordstrom.com plans to make forecasts and reports instantly available to its drop-ship vendors so that they can better match inventories to Nordstrom.com's sales forecasts. In contrast with the more traditional means of integration and data sharing, such as EDI, Web services offers a more flexible or "loosely coupled"way of linking applications. Where EDI allows companies to exchange data, such as purchase orders and invoices in structured formats, Web services lets companies open up their systems and share a wide array of information with far less tailoring. Ideally, customers will have a better experience because the shoes they want will be in stock more often.

So necessity bred action. Even though Nordstrom.com doesn't have an exact time frame for this project - largely because many of its shoe vendors can't yet support Web services - the company's vision is within reach, says former CTO Paul Onnen. That's because Nordstrom.com is already using the technology to link its online operations to mainframe systems at parent company Nordstrom in Seattle and at banking subsidiary Nordstrom Federal Savings Bank in Denver. "Web services are already a part of the way we do business,"Onnen says. "We just happen to be a little bit early because we had the need and the technology."

Onnen latched on to Web services last spring when he was looking to sell cosmetics on Nordstrom.com. The Web site is built on a Microsoft platform, but the ERP system that checks inventory and places the order is a Nordstrom.com system running on HP Unix servers. To complicate matters further, all the inventory information is stored on an IBM mainframe at Nordstrom's Seattle headquarters. The goal here was to get all the systems talking to each other.

Onnen considered going the more traditional route, using IBM's MQSeries middleware to knit the systems together. Instead, Nordstrom.com chose a software platform from Iona Technologies. That allowed developers to build a Web services application that links the disparate systems and provides real-time inventory information across the different platforms. (So a shopper could see if Lancome body cream was available.) Using Web services, Onnen accomplished this for less time and money. With middleware, Onnen says, one application exchanges data with another in a connection that must be custom built. But with Web services, Nordstrom.com can take the customer's order data and hand it off to numerous other systems. "The key with Web services is that you only have to build it a single time,"says Onnen.

Most recently, Nordstrom.com used Web services to allow customers to buy gift cards online and by telephone. In this case, Nordstrom.com wanted to connect the Web site directly to an IBM mainframe at its savings bank to do gift-card balance queries and redemptions. Onnen and his team built a single Web services tool that allows all the parties - Nordstrom.com, the bank, the call centre - to query a gift-card balance. So when Ms Smith wants to redeem her Nordstrom's gift card, she can either go to a store or cash it in at Nordstrom.com.

Onnen says he sees no drawbacks to his company's early experimentation with Web services and plans to expand its use on the company's systems. The challenge with being an early user is that some merchandise vendors and business partners may not yet have tools in place to support Web services. In order for Web services to work effectively, he says, those partners must implement the same technologies so that the systems can speak to one another.

Onnen stresses that Nordstrom.com hasn't yet used Web services over a public network, choosing instead to interact with internal units and trusted business partners over a secure network. That's because sending Web services over the Internet can leave companies vulnerable to both security and network reliability problems.

SIDEBAR: Nordstrom.com

LOCATION: Seattle.

ANNUAL REVENUE: $US5.6 billion (parent company, 2001).

BUSINESS: Online arm of retailer Nordstrom.

WEB SERVICES APPLICATION: Integrates Web site and call centre with inventory data stored on mainframes at Nordstrom, and gift certificate information at Nordstrom Federal Savings Bank.

THE PAYOFF: Online shoppers get faster service on ordered goods and can check gift-card balances online.

SOFTWARE PARTNER: Iona Technologies