Web Services Hurdles

Developing a service-oriented architecture is full of challenges, such as governance, security and reliability.

By Mitch Betts

August 16, 2004 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - Last year, we boldly predicted a Web services tsunami , with XML and SOAP changing a wide swath of IT development. OK, so it's really more like a rushing river than a tidal wave. But the river is still swelling. A recent IDC survey of 197 IT managers shows that about a third of the respondents have completed one or more Web services projects, and more than a third are either evaluating the technology or doing a pilot project. Much of the activity involves employee portals, e-commerce, back-office applications and even mission-critical work, IDC says.

But a tsunami it's not. Why? As usual, the technology is more difficult to implement than the vendors would have you believe. Pilot projects aren't so bad, but even well-funded adopters in the financial services industry have found it tricky to come up with a service-oriented architecture (SOA) for the whole company. So we're taking a more sober look this year. Our first story is about the challenges of SOA granularity, repositories and governance (page 34).

IDC says the top barriers to Web services adoption are a simple lack of money and a not-so-simple lack of security. We can't help you with the budget, but we do have an update on the security issues (page 37). We also cover the topic of message reliability, which doesn't rank as a burning issue yet, but IDC says it will become one as the volume, scale and complexity of projects grow (page 36).

Mitch Betts is Computerworld's Features editor. Contact him at mitch_betts@computerworld.com.

Web Services Hurdles

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