Web Services

Web Services technologies, methods, and approaches are fundamentally altering the IT industry. This breaking wave will also accelerate ongoing structural changes in industry sectors such as financial services, healthcare and manufacturing, and will underpin changes in the way governments engage with their citizens in future. Of course this sounds like hype or so much gwana-gwana; after all, how can a technology have such far reaching effects, especially when nobody seems to want to spend money on IT right now?

In answering this question it is important to understand that Web Services is not a technical revolution so much as a political and industrial one. Web Service-like technologies have actually been around for a while: Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), remote procedure calls (RPC), component-based development (CBD), Object Oriented (OO) programming have all shown similar promise to Web Services, and have been equally hyped, at least within IT circles, but have fallen by the wayside or become established in niche markets, with associated communities. Thus CORBA still flourishes in telecommunications companies with staffs of rocket scientists dedicated to cross platform transactional programming.

Web Services is different. For one thing, the Internet has changed the way we think about business; today smart business people consider technology to be a key driver for success. These folks know the internet hasn't changed the world yet, but that it offers a foundation for change. The Net bubble was about spurious notions of value. The Web Services evolution on the other hand will be about incremental changes, process improvements, and clear returns on investment. Will new business models emerge? Sure. Will established businesses suddenly get disintermediated by a kid in a Metallica tee-shirt? No.

The kind of folks that understand this new environment are not necessarily technical specialists but they are tech savvy. Web Services is a concept they can understand.

Web Services is the next step towards a truly revolutionary Internet. The key is standardization--the introduction of agreed upon standard interfaces enabling different types of computer systems to speak the same language. The history of standards creation is the history of the world - the cubit, standard tooling and die sizes, the standard railway gauge, the quart, the meter, GSM. Each of these standards fostered incredible advances in productivity and changes in the way we live.

What has this got to do with the Internet and Web Services? If you read much of the general business press at the moment, technology is to blame for the current downturn. Blaming technology because you bought too much of it is kind of like suing McDonalds because it made you fat. A more appropriate response would be to think like the businesses that now laud SAP. We have the platform--now what are we going to do with it? Like R/3, the Internet is a platform. Web Services is what we are going to do with it.