Conversion Infrastructure for Maintaining High Availability of Web Services Using Multiple Service Providers

Web Services allow an enterprise to focus on its own business expertise and to employ information technology services offered by others; however, doing so exposes the enterprise to the risk of loss of service or data, if the service provider fails. The use of multiple service providers reduces the risk of failure, but it introduces the complication of incompatible service interfaces, data formats, and stored data. In this paper, we propose a conversion infrastructure that facilitates the use of multiple alternative Web Services at different service providers, to achieve high availability, even in the event of a failure or a catastrophe.