 What are Web Services Good For?
Hmm. The way I see it is that there are two levels of Web Service utilization.
1) To bind together corporate apps. This is something IBM will eventually dominate.
2) To build new apps that combine services to do new things.
The second part of this is ultimately where the money is. Why? New apps are much more lucrative than cost reductions from improved app to app communication. Also, it isn't locked up by a big player like IBM.
There will be two types of new apps:
1) Corporate apps. These apps will combine services to extend information and functionality to a much larger group of individuals than currently serviced. They will also do new things.
2) Consumer apps. These are the Hailstorm services (calendars, photo
albums, etc) that may or may not connect to commerce networks.
There are three ways to build these new apps:
1) Build a traditional Website. Centralized. Does not work through firewalls. Slow and expensive.
2) Use .Net (not ready yet) and abandon Web skills.
3) User Radio and build a desktop Web application (or a combo of .Net and Radio). Hey, I can't help it....
The reason I see desktop Web apps winning it allows companies to leverage Web skills and deploy new apps in days. For the most part, the era of the locked-down centralized app is done. You can now recombine functionality to build apps that target specific needs. Better yet, you can do that in a browser at low cost.
This is going to be a huge market. Why? This technique will allow companies to extend data and services to more employees, business partners, and customers with functionality that is tailored to their needs.
4:31:45 PM 
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