AT&T is rolling out its first Web services offering, which the company says will let IP users better integrate applications internally, and more easily support customer and other third-party access to specific applications.

AT&T is teaming with application integration company Grand Central Communications to support AT&T WebService Connect.

No Web services company other than Grand Central "brings together the same multiprotocol and multi-version [software] support and orchestration," says Bob Lamoureux, chief architect at Thomson Financial, an operating unit of The Thomson Corp. in Stamford, Conn. "We have a good relationship with [AT&T], and Grand Central had the platform but not the network footprint." Coupling the services made all the difference, he says.

Lamoureux says Thomson is organizing its Web services applications and expects to have them up and running over the WebService Connect network in the next few months.

The service lets customers better integrate islands of applications deployed throughout a company. For example, a company can set up a Web services process whereby its Siebel Systems and PeopleSoft applications automatically share information.

The service also lets users open applications, such as supply-chain management tools, to partners or customers who then can check inventory easily. Customers specify how users outside their company can access and view specific applications.

Grand Central provides the platform, which is essentially middleware, in a data center hosted at a West Coast location the company declined to divulge. The platform is based on open Web services standards such as Simple Object Access Protocol, and more traditional Internet standards such as FTP and Electronic Data Interchange Internet Integration (EDIINT). The Web services gateways, deployed at Grand Central's facilities, also let customers exchange application data using HTTP and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).

Thomson's Lamoureux says he likes that Grand Central supports not only Web services standards but also HTTP and SMTP, which lets customers that haven't deployed the latest Web services protocols access Thomson's applications.

Grand Central has multiple high-bandwidth IP connections coming into its data center, but AT&T WebService Connect users will only access the data center over dedicated AT&T IP lines, says Halsey Minor, CEO and founder of Grand Central.