|
Enterprise Software's End. Phil Wainewright linked to this column by Paul Strassmann, who has the credentials to support his opinions. In addition to the passages quoted by Phil, consider these:
Web services make it possible to unburden the CIO of an organization from housekeeping and allow him to make IT a source of competitive advantage. Through loose coupling of services, the Web environment is more suited to the prevailing conditions where mergers, acquisitions and supplier and customer collaboration call for interapplication interoperability in a matter of days instead of years, as currently dictated by ERP initiatives.
I agree with this, except with regard to web services making IT a source of competitive advantage. As web services become commonplace, the period of competitive advantage will end, to be replaced by a world in which not using web services is a disadvantage. Think of FAX and email. Where would you be without them?
Why then is the adoption of Web services so slow? Organizations can shift to Web service-based integration only after they restructure the way IT is managed and shift attention from computing to communications. They must also accept a move away from ownership of the means of computing and be willing to purchase most of their transactions as a service.
The comment regarding ownership is right on, but if you take a step back, I think you'll see that the move to web services isn't slow at all. The vendors and standards bodies are rollign out their deliverables faster than at any time in the past. But they're not done--many pieces are still missing--so most IT shops can't move forward with large-scale projects just yet.
Posted Tuesday, May 13, 2003 7:31:58 AM 
|
