Software vendors keep telling us that Web services are the answer. But what is the question? Are there business drivers for using Web services, or are software vendors just trying to drive their sales?
Business and IT managers like to think in terms of distinct projects with clearly defined deliverables and a relatively certain return on investment. Vendors, on the other hand, are keen to preserve their revenue growth and are therefore somewhat loath to concede that things work well enough pretty much as they are.
Thus is the eternal struggle of innovation versus pragmatism, and the two are rapidly coming to the fore as software companies follow a now well-worn path by hyping Web services into the stratosphere.
This year, anybody who's anybody in the software world is building a Web services strategy that will dictate the composition of their next major version.
Customers are being exhorted to buy into the technology; new Web services standards, and improvements to existing ones, are rolling off the treadmill; observers are jumping on the bandwagon with heady market share and take-up projections that will no doubt prove over-ambitious over time, but nonetheless add further fuel to the fire that the concept of Web services has become.
Analysts have jumped on the bandwagon, spewing out grandiose projections about the potential of the Web services market that belie the torpor plaguing the rest of the IT industry.
In January Gartner, for one, predicted that Web services "will capture substantial attention" this year, and will "dominate" new application deployment by 2004.
The firm has also projected a US$21 billion market for Web services by 2005, with local analysts expecting Australian businesses to contribute nearly AU$1 billion by that time.
That's not bad for a technology that is still far from concrete or specific, and offers still uncertain benefits.
While other highly hyped technologies like CRM and ERP promised specific outcomes, Web services is little more than a collection of standards without a specific product to encapsulate them. It is a means to no particular end, rather like buying a box of Lego building blocks for a child and waiting to see what they come up with.
