Hard-hitting IT columnist Simon Moores gives his personal take on
the hot issue of the day.Web services are, as we know, a grander
way of describing the knitting of applications and systems together
with Internet (IP) standards that rely on XML as a language for
tagging data. Their component-based model allows developers to
reuse the building blocks of code created by others to assemble and
extend them in new ways.
In theory, Web services are all about the vendors co-operating on a
common set of standards and this implies that the many proprietary
evils which have locked business into one vendor or another will
become a thing of the past. But don't be so sure about this, as
it's rather like a government living up to its manifesto
promises.
A decade ago, business embraced clunky, client-server technology
and tomorrow, we're promised a whole new vision of geographically
dispersed mix of applications servers and Web clients, which will,
seamlessly and transparently, shuttle every conceivable business
process around the Internet.
The two key expressions that lie behind the evangelical hype of the
Web services industry are "integration" and "streamlining". Two
years into the 21st century, applications still take too long and
cost too much to integrate into legacy systems. As more companies
attempt to integrate their supply chain through the firewall, they
discover that conflicting standards get in the way.
As a consequence, the "dynamic" streamlining of middleware
integration looks very much like the Holy Grail of IT. Promised on
behalf of Web services, it is supposed to eliminate any requirement
for the customised coding and recoding of business processes or an
understanding of another company's infrastructure.
Today, the Web services industry remains immature and potential
customers will have learned from the overblown promises of the ASP
industry two years ago. Security remains a problem, and most
analysts would agree that Web services are not yet ready for
mission-critical projects and that larger companies should think
twice before throwing out their traditional electronic data
interchange (EDI) systems.
Should we be dazzled by evidence of co-operation between vendors in
the support of "common" standards and interoperability? Web
services represent the lower level detail, the DNA of IP
connectivity, but building and integrating a complex business
process is rather like recreating a dinosaur - it requires rather
more than joining strands of DNA together.
While the industry can't evolve without agreement over the
middleware detail, there's no real evidence that simply exposing
one's data and business process to a Web services architecture will
result in the magical appearance of much bigger business
applications, without the assistance of very specialised and,
arguably, very expensive applications integration software.
Being cynical shouldn't stand in the way of progress. Web services
will have an enormous impact and you can't ignore the inevitable.
The technology may not be ready for distributed mission critical
applications, but that's no reason not to experiment with smaller
pilot projects inside the firewall to see how the technology
"knits" the services and applications together.
However, business should remain wary of this new technology being
oversold and I wouldn't encourage anyone to join the choir until it
becomes rather less of a magic wand and much more of a solid
proposition.
What is your view?
Are you embracing Web services?
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ZentelligenceSetting the world to rights with the collected thoughts and
opinions of the futurist writer, broadcaster and Computer Weekly
columnist Simon Moores.