The Web has become the world's greatest repository of information on anything and everything. It's extremely useful - as long as you can find what you're looking for.

Despite the arrival of Google and other powerful search tools, information seekers can't always connect with the most relevant information. Searches often are too broad and yield irrelevant results. But there's an even more problematic issue: digital information often remains undiscovered - stranded on "islands," out of reach of Web site or intranet users.

Increasingly, however, savvy content owners are turning to XML and Web services to deliver relevant search results to seekers of Web information in a standard way. Through the use of XML authoring tools, owners of these digital information islands are simplifying the creation of XML content and enabling them to more effectively connect with consumers of information.

Business are realizing the many benefits of connecting these information islands: making information more accessible and thus more valuable; providing more relevant results to Web site visitors; and improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their organizations.

XML defines - or "tags" - Web content in a way that makes it easy for information to be exchanged or located. Combined with Web services, it serves as unifying force that makes content more accessible and available. When information is more accessible, it's open to a larger audience, making it exponentially more valuable to your organization.

Ektron expects 2004 to be a landmark year for the adoption of XML content made available via Web services. More and more companies will design their Web strategies using this technology. XML and Web services will enhance the search, retrieval, exchange, storage, editing, publishing, management, use, and reuse of information.

For example, XML can help real estate agencies succeed in connecting homebuyers and sellers by connecting islands of information without a need to duplicate data - generating more opportunities for sales. Consider the scenario of a real estate agent in California whose Web site serves up a localized database of homes for sale. The site needs to connect to databases in other realtors' offices across the country to serve home listings in other markets.

In one instance, a buyer in California visiting their local realtor's site may be looking for the following criteria in a home: "New Hampshire" and "three bedroom" and "minimum 1,400 square feet". The local California realtor doesn't have that information in their database. You can't search successfully on Google based on that criteria. But thanks to the power of XML-tagged content and Web services, that California real estate Web site can call up information from other realtors' Web servers and serve it up to users via a browser.

The use of XML content also has a significant relevance to corporate intranets. Take the example of a Fortune 500 corporation with thousands of employees in multiple facilities. When an employee in one facility searches the local intranet for information, Web services may call out a query to other intranet servers across the company. It can search the XML-tagged information on those disconnected islands and produce highly relevant search results, benefiting the employee (who finds the information they need) and the organization (which delivered quick and efficient service through its intranet).

Content management vendors continue to empower the XML revolution by developing tools that put the power of XML into the hands of any content owner. For example, content management solutions (CMS) provide fast retrieval of content within any element of XML documents. This enables advanced search operators and sophisticated indexing technology - users benefit from virtually unlimited searching possibilities. It gives users the ability to search metadata and the full text of documents, allowing them to query the server using multiple indexes simultaneously. It also enables searches on full-text, strings, numeric, and date ranges. Extensive multicriteria sorting on any element or document attribute allows maximum flexibility in ordering presented results.

Editing tools continue to make XML creation transparent to content owners. Organizations are creating XML-tagged content for product catalogs, publication listings, contact databases and much more. Organizations also enjoy the benefit of being able to repurpose XML content for various client devices - Web browsers, printers, PDAs, and Web-enabled phones.

As we head into 2004, there will be a strong momentum for organizations to bring Web services technologies into the mainstream of their service-oriented architecture.