The push toward Web services
Web services may be the El Dorado of the software industry. Just as Sir Walter Raleigh and countless prospectors looked for the city of gold, vendors and corporations alike have sought out ways to enable application accessibility across the Internet from a variety of devices -- without having to worry about the infrastructure involved.
The notion of Web services exploded in June 2000 when Microsoft announced its .NET strategy for Internet-based applications and unofficially dubbed such applications "Web services." Since then IBM has touted technologies it already has as Web-services enablers and, more recently, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett-Packard proclaimed that they too have been working on Web-services technologies for some time.
With all of the major software vendors now backing Web services, little doubt remains about the general direction in which the industry is heading in terms of the dominant environment for business applications. "Web services are a very profound advancement for e-business. [They] can change the Internet into a platform for application integration," says Scott Hebner, IBM's director of marketing for WebSphere.
What are Web services?
Although most of the important vendors have pledged some sort of allegiance to Web services, and all have detailed plans, none has clearly articulated exactly what Web services will be. "There are so few examples of Web services in action that it's difficult for developers to understand the value proposition," says Rick Ross, president of Cary, N.C.-based Java Lobby.
That may be true because the technology is in a state of infancy, and won't begin to mature for at least another two to three years. Early examples of Web services include on-demand delivery of stock quotes to a cell phone or pager -- but such bare-bones capabilities are merely the tip of the iceberg.
Web services are software components that represent business functionality that can be accessed by users -- via applications or another Web service -- using standard protocols. More importantly, a Web service may combine several applications that a user needs, such as the various pieces of a supply-chain architecture. For the end-user, however, the entire infrastructure will appear as a single application.
Early supporters of Web services say that almost any application imaginable can become a Web service.
"There are going to be more Web services than Web pages," says Frank Moss, co-founder and co-chairman of Lynnfield, Mass.-based Web platform and infrastructure provider Bowstreet, and former president and chairman of Tivoli Systems. "Companies will come together on the Web to create entirely new business models, and Web services will be the currency," Moss adds.
"Web services will legitimize the ASP [application service provider] market," says Peter Urban, a senior analyst at AMR Research in Boston. Urban continued that when popular applications become available via a Web-services model, ASPs will gain more traction and people will begin to see tangible results and benefits.
Standards and protocols
Moving forward, Web services will encompass just about any application available or imaginable delivered via the Web and standard protocols, especially UDDI
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