Taking sides
Because everybody recognises their importance, the Web services industry has become the latest battleground in the IT industry's perennial battle between dark and light, although this time the players are different.
Microsoft, which by now has become used to being universally distrusted because of its chronic desire to differentiate its products, has been working closely with IBM to rapidly develop consistent and workable Web services standards under the auspices of the 106-member Web Services Interoperability Organisation (WS-I).
"We're trying to take the Internet and make it into an enterprise-class platform, says Charles Stevens, vice president of Microsoft's Enterprise Partners Group.
"Customers like the building-block approach because it lets them pull these systems together. But we can't just talk the talk: we've got to prove that we can be a world-class integrator using XML across business-class platforms."
Microsoft's vision of Web services is based around its .NET strategy, which has been rapidly gaining substance with the recent release of its Visual Studio.NET development environment and the anticipated launch of its Web services-enabled Windows.NET operating system next year.
Then there's IBM, which has been heavily promoting both Linux and XML-based Web services, but favours the use of J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) as an environment for building and integrating Web services.
Sun, the creator of J2EE, has consistently refused to join the WS-I, although in May it finally conceded that doing so might be beneficial in its efforts to position itself as a Web services leader.
However, its offer to join was contingent on the creation of two new board positions that would put it on equal footing with IBM and Microsoft in determining the course of Web services.
IBM thinks Sun's Java expertise would be beneficial; Microsoft, typically sceptical of its ideological nemesis, was against Sun's membership.
As of publication time, the decision as to whether Sun would be admitted--much less whether it could secure itself two board seats, which are coveted by dozens of other WS-I members--was still up in the air.
With vendor sniping rampant and the final pantheon of Web services still being formulated, customers can be forgiven for remaining sceptical of the whole concept.
Political machinations aside, however, Web services will soon be a part of your life whether you want them to be or not. They will soon be ubiquitous within major operating systems, and within a few years all major enterprise applications will use Web services interfaces to interoperate.
If nothing else, Web services have the potential to end the headaches of application integration that continue to plague all manner of business.
Because vendors recognised the need for backwards compatibility early on, they've positioned Web services as both a way of developing completely new functionality, whilst integrating existing code developed previously in all manner of environments.
"The justification has to be to unlock the value that people have already got," says Mark Chrimes, managing director of Avanade Australia, which has already engaged several customers in .NET discussions and has helped drive early Web services implementations with customers such as the NSW Department of Employment and Workplace Relations and Sydney's Taronga Zoo.
"There's a lot of dissatisfaction from current implementations, but the cost of replacing legacy systems is phenomenally and prohibitively high. There are many more moving parts in the IT world now than before, and the real value of Web services is going to be in reducing the cost of development of those applications."
While openly praising the concept of Web services, however, analyst firms are universally recommending caution for customers considering investing in them just yet. That's because everybody agrees Web services are a Good Thing, but there is still no consensus on exactly what they are.
Add to this a lack of available products and a business world with far bigger concerns, and you've got a Web services market that even vendors concede is set to go through a period of disillusionment as customers cotton onto the fact that two simple words and a good idea won't be enough to improve their bottom line overnight.
