r
r
r
r
January 13, 2003 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — A new report from research organization the Yankee Group (YankeeGroup.com) predicts that Web services have the potential to be second only to the Internet in their importance to, and impact on, corporations and consumers.
r
r
r
Based on interviews with corporate customers, the report “Top Vendors Already Stake Their Claims in Web Services,” also highlights the results of a separate survey of 1,500 IT professionals worldwide, conducted jointly with Sunbelt Software Inc.
r
r
r
“Mainstream adoption of Web Services is most likely 2 to 3 years away,” says report author Laura DiDio, Yankee Group Application Infrastructure & Software Platforms senior analyst. “The reasons are obvious: designing, building and deploying a Web Services architecture will be costly, complex, time-consuming and extremely challenging. And this is at a time when corporations are overwhelmingly cash-constrained and struggling to find IT purchasing dollars for the most basic necessities like new PCs and printers.”
r
r
r
The report, says the Yankee Group, also points out that adoption is complicated by the many components of Web services, including a long list of competing protocols, devices and management tools. And the industry has yet to see the release of the “killer applications” that will lead to mainstream adoption.
r
r
r
Despite the complexity, and the disagreement over just what constitutes Web services, says DiDio, development of the toolkits and software is moving forward among a group of industry-leading vendors determined to be involved.
