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The year in review for Web services
What was the year like for Web services in 2002? On the upside, by most accounts it was a year in which key standards solidified, Web services gained increasing mindshare in the CIO suite, some corporations began to launch pilot projects, and others moved into production mode. On the downside, it was also a year in which squabbling continued among key vendors over who will control the future of Web services. In this first part of a two-part column, we'll take a look back at the year in Web services. In the next column, we'll look into the crystal ball and see what 2003 might hold in store.
What happened with standards?
Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of the OASIS standards-setting body, says that in terms of standards, the most significant news of the past year was threefold: The formation of the WS-I industry vendor organization promoting Web services interoperability ; the UDDI standard coming to OASIS in mid-year; and the beginning of work on the WS-Security specification.
"The WS-I was a recognition by the vendors involved that they have to drive interoperability across platforms no matter the language," he says, and he hopes that the work of the organization will put
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an end to the continuing battles between the .NET and J2EE standards. As for UDDI, he says that its importance was in proving that the industry could deliver on agreeing on the core standards underlying Web services. And for WS-Security, he says the work in 2002 will lay the groundwork for solving one of Web services remaining roadblocks in the coming year, fear about security.
Aside from standards, the important news of 2002 is that "a year ago, there was a lot of hype and buzz from the vendors, but not much implementation going on. This year saw the start of implementations, and now the bulk of enterprises using the Internet in some way are making plans to implement Web services."
Looking beyond standards
The year proved to be a pivotal one in terms of product development, says Ron Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst of the ZapThink consulting group. "It was a big year for Web services," he maintains. "It moved from being a bunch of specs to a bunch of products. The year before, there weren't products —there were just proposals."
His words are born out by Kerry Champion, president and co-founder of the security product company Westbridge Technology, who says that "in the last year our focus as a company was on getting the right products built and talking to customers about our product development. So step one was getting the right technologies in place."
In terms of standards, Schmelzer believes that the movement towards agreeing on security standards was key, because that is one of the major remaining roadblocks to the widespread deployment of Web services.
But not everything during 2002 was rosy, in his view. "It was a year in which Web services became politicized," he believes. "You saw pitched battles around .NET, around Open Source, and in a variety of issues around the ownership of intellectual property, for example companies saying that they owned particular pieces of intellectual property concerning identity management." These kinds of issues need to be resolved in 2003, he says, if Web services are ever to live up to their potential.
Beyond that, he says that the vendor community will have to struggle with an evolving marketplace, and companies will struggle to find their niche if they are to survive.
"We've seen the commoditization of the application server in the past year, and so companies are going to have to struggle to position themselves in that kind of world…And there's been a consolidation in some segments, for example the portal and content management niches becoming more tied together. I expect that we'll see more of that in 2003."
Other analysts weigh in
Thomas Murphy, senior program director for Meta Group consulting firm, agrees with Gannon that one of the most important events of the past year was the formation of the WS-I: "Not only does it ensure interoperability across various platforms, but it ensures that various vendors are playing well together," he says.
He says that work done in 2002 on security standards was one of the most important events of the year, but also points to lesser-known work during the year on proposals around workflow and orchestration as being vital to the long-range health of the technology.
Workflow and orchestration standards are important because "we have to move on from the core base of standards like SOAP, WSDL and UDDI and then layer in the services needed to make it a more robust technology that can be used by businesspeople, not just by programmers." When that happens, he says, Web services "can play on par with EAI (enterprise application integration) software."
Nicholas Evans, a director in the Integration Services practice of BearingPoint (formerly KPMG Consulting), says that Web services follows the same two-to-five-year evolutionary path as any new technology, and that it is currently in the middle years of that cycle. "For the industry, it was a year of standards-building and getting them into place," he says. "On the enterprise side, it was a good year for companies to start incorporating Web services as part of their IT strategies, and so we saw a lot of clients doing prototyping and proof-of-concept, with some implementation….it was a year that people began to understand Web services' value proposition and business case."
And even though most people don't think there was a great deal of implementation going on during the year, Evans says that there was a significant more work done that people realized. He points to a survey done by the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) that found that "Web services adoption in enterprises is further along than people have thought. Many large enterprises have said it will be a large part of their infrastructure in twelve months."
If the survey is to be believed, then 2003 should be a potential break-out year for Web services. Do the experts agree with the survey? What else will happen in the next year with Web services? I'll look at that in more detail in my next column.
Continues in Part Two
About the Author
Preston Gralla, a well-known technology expert, is the author of more than 20 books, including "How the Internet Works," which has been translated into 14 languages and sold several hundred thousand copies worldwide. He is an expert on Web services and the author of a major research and white paper for the Software and Information Industry Association on the topic. Gralla was the founding managing editor of PC Week, a founding editor and then editor and editorial director of PC/Computing, and an executive editor for ZDNet and CNet. He has written about technology for more than 15 years for many major magazines and newspapers, including PC Magazine, Computerworld, CIO Magazine, eWeek and its forerunner PC Week, PC/Computing, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and the Dallas Morning News among others. As a well-known technology guru, he appears frequently on TV and radio shows and networks, including CNN, MSNBC, ABC World News Now, the CBS Early Show, PBS's All Things Considered and others. He has won a number of awards for his writing, including from the Computer Press Association for the Best Feature in a Computer Publication. He can be reached at preston@gralla.com.
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This was first published in January 2003