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The Impact on Your Business. If you listen to the software vendors and read the trade press, you might believe Web Services are as revolutionary as the Internet itself. But I think the changes will be far more subtle. First, remember that while Web Services greatly ease the tasks of integration (particularly with your external partners), that's really all they do. Web Services don't significantly ease the tasks of building the underlying applications. For example, you can create a Web Service that allows your customers to find out what's in stock, but you still have to buy or build an inventory management system and keep it running. Web Services won't make those tasks significantly easier or less costly.
Second, Web Services will not ultimately be business differentiators any more than having email or a FAX machine are differentiators. Like email and FAX, support for Web Services (at least as a client) will be required in virtually every industry. Even the local Mom and Pop retailer will use Web Services to communicate with it's suppliers.
Web Services are for real, and we'll all be using them a few years down the road, but expect the changes to affect how we do thins, not what we do.
Posted Sunday, March 03, 2002 8:58:45 AM 
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