Simplicity key to successful Web services
Characterising Web services as a low-risk technology for implementing high-risk business processes, Gartner analyst David Smith led one of the more popular presentations at this week's Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2001.
While business continuity is a major theme at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2001, many of the other previously planned presentations, such as CRM, XML, and financial services, are still on track at the conference.
Gartner analyst David Smith's presentation on Web services, titled "Software as a Service Comes Alive," was well-timed for an audience only now coming up to speed on the nascent but standards-based component technology.
An informal poll of the session's attendees revealed that many were confused about what exactly Web services are. Some thought Web services and Application Service Providers (companies that provide applications as an Internet-based service) are the same thing. Others thought that service providers such as ISPs, Web hosting companies, and other Internet-based service provision companies are "Web services." Still others attended the session simply because they had heard that Web services are the next "hot thing."
Smith set the audience straight. Without making references to specific vendors, Smith criticised the industry for labeling Web services as the next big thing, noting that "Web services may be exciting, but they're no big deal." Prominent vendors that are hinging entire strategies on the Web services space include IBM and its WebSphere, Microsoft and its .Net, Sun with its Open Network Environment, HP with its recently acquired Bluestone software, and BEA with its J2EE-based WebLogic suite of products.
Suggesting that the Web services market represents a cross-section of technology and business processes, Smith characterised Web services as a low-risk technology that can be used to implement high-risk business processes. Surveying his audience, Smith discovered that roughly half the attendees were technologists while one-third were business people. The former group, he noted, is more concerned with implementation issues such as platform choices, while the latter group is more interested in the way Web services can be used to create stronger relationships with both suppliers and customers.
Citing the straightforward and easy-to-read text of XML -- one of the open standards used by Web services -- Smith characterised Web services as a much easier to use version of previous remote procedure call technologies (RPC). "A Web service," says Smith, "is basically an XML RPC." According to Smith, the primary technical and business goals for organizations considering Web services should be platform independence, the ability to distribute computing, scalability, and security. The result of successfully deployed Web services will be IT and business agility.
While the audience thinned some after Smith's detailed description of Web services, many remained to here him separate fact from fallacy with respect to the yellow pages of Web services: a standard known as UDDI. While UDDI makes it possible to search public networks for a Web service, Smith believes that the better and more useful deployments of UDDI will be on private networks.
Regarding platform selection, Smith displayed one of Gartner's trademark magic quadrant diagrams and identified HP's e-Speak as being a visionary technology.(A sound bite that HP CEO Carly Fiorina probably could have used in her keynote the following morning.) Although each of his charts showed Microsoft ahead of other players in the Web services space, Smith noted that "Java would come along, having a significant role." But for now, Smith added, "Sun is not yet a leader."
Smith advised that a cultural shift will be required of most developers before they can take on Web services. That shift will need to move more in the direction of a component re-use. But to really take advantage of Web services, Smith said that developers will have to start viewing software as a service, referring to a concept called SODA, or Service Oriented Development of Applications.
Once a company commits to the principles of re-use and SODA, Smith said, discipline will still be required. Suggesting that companies shouldn't get to ambitious, Smith said, "Developers must remember to keep it simple. The bigger a Web services project gets, the more likely it is to fail."
