Forrester Research: Try Web services
You should experiment with Web services in 2002. But you'll need to rise above the hype and confusion.
Bruce Temkin
Group Director
Forrester Research
During 2002, many firms will push for ROI from previous investments. As a result, eProcurement, supply chain, and CRM efforts will remain active--albeit in bite-sized projects. Also, the combination of terrorism and virus attacks will keep IT departments busy with security audits, patches, and disaster recovery plans.
As these efforts continue, look out for the emergence of Web services, which Forrester defines as: "Software designed to be used by other software via Internet protocols and formats." The idea behind Web services isn't new--firms started linking apps via the Internet years ago. What's new is a fresh batch of XML-based standards - led by SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI--that can dramatically lower the costs.
Hype will go wild in 2002 as every major vendor announces Web services capabilities. So IT departments must brace for the result: confusion. Web services are often described as applications using public registries to find and link with other applications. The standards for this public discovery process, however, are still many years away.
Nirvana may not exist, but IT departments should experiment in 2002 with simple Web services that link to known partners and between internal systems. Start with Web services that: 1) Read from enterprise apps without writing any data--avoiding the need to recover from failed transactions. Good candidates: tasks like checking prices, inventory levels, or order status. 2) Leverage well-componentised code--COM or J2EE. Vendors like Cape Clear Software generate Web services interfaces from existing components.
