Opinion: Accessible Web Services Networks Are Key

Computerworld - In the coming months and years, Web services will transform the IT business landscape. Once the many Web services standards are vetted and sorted out, Web services will become widely accepted, and the number of available Web service capabilities will grow from the thousands to the millions. At that time, the number of development services that one could combine will be practically infinite, and Web services will have reached their greatest potential.

But for this to happen, companies will need an easy, organized method of locating a particular Web service registry with lightning speed. Typing a URL and logging into a directory somewhere won't do. Instead, capabilities must be embedded deeply and consistently throughout a wide variety of visual development environments.

Such easily accessible Web service networks are an important foundational element. Over the years, the public Universal Description, Discovery and Integration network, with all of its openness, has been turned into an accumulation of fake, nonworking or test Web service publications. Potential customers who search the network find it difficult to distinguish between working and nonworking Web service capabilities and as a result quickly become frustrated. Meanwhile, trust concerns related to the publication of Web Services Description Language interfaces or other data for programmatic queries have dissuaded many organizations from using the network as it was originally envisioned. Private networks that have adopted the UDDI specification have alleviated these trust-related concerns, but they generally don't participate with other networks, and the opportunities that a truly open and connected network can provide are lost. As it becomes apparent to companies that the success of their Web service projects will depend on having the broadest and most persistent exposure of their capabilities possible, market demand for an open, trusted and accessible Web service network will arise.

Easy availability of abundant Web services will let companies move away from time-consuming software code writing. Software engineers will still be required for legacy technology environments, but eventually executives will begin to see the business value of moving toward IT models that use speedier, less technical visual procedures for developing technical products and services. The majority of time and energy spent will be focused on creative development and the human aspects of business relationships.

In the next decade, markets will begin to shift around this new paradigm. Opportunities for software engineers who possess business management skills will increase as their traditional roles are replaced by business analysts and business managers. New opportunities will present themselves as more and more executives begin to see that it's their human assets, not complex technology environments, that give their companies a competitive edge in providing the best products and services.