Web services will change relationships between IT suppliers and IT
departments, according to research published last week by analyst
firm Ovum.
Ovum views Web services as a convergence of integration technology
and object-based Web software technologies.
The result will be a cheap form of integration which which will
give rise to inter-enterprise collaboration as the norm, the
research found.
Ovum's research director Neil Ward-Dutton predicted the rise of a
new category of integration service providers offering business the
opportunity to collaborate by renting integration links between the
corporate data of business partners.
Christine Axton, senior researcher at Ovum, said, "The merging of
the two technologies is where the opportunity lies. Web services is
about interacting with those outside one's own domain.
Axton said, "Suppliers have been used to selling packaged software.
This will change. And they have been used to selling it to IT
managers. This will change also.
"We envisage a future where software will be sold to
line-of-business managers by service providers."