IBM, Java, and the Future of Web Services (Continued)
The State of Web Services Development
FTPOnline: Right now, it seems that Web services development involves projects for behind the firewall.
Sutor: Understand that there are different audiences: early adopter, mainstream, late adopter. When you say things are inside the firewall now, you have to specify which of those audiences you're discussing. Many applications have been developed, and they're shown at the ibm.com Web services site. Eighty companies are using Web services today, many of which are in production. These are early adopters, using WebSphere and Tivoli. We'll see a rolling adoption of these Web services. In 2003, we'll see mainstream adoption—not to say there won't be many production-level Web services before that time.
We started the JStart program back in the Java days. It focuses on people who want to do pilot programs, not more than three months in length. The projects aren't expensive, and their purpose is mainly to understand technologies and whether they'll work in a particular environment. Someone might say, "My software engineer understands existing technology. If I bring in Web services, I want to make intelligent bets about whether we're ready for it, to get a good working sense of the ROI in my environment. So when we go up the chain to executive management, I can work with real experience." Most of our references right now are JStart references: companies such as ADP, ABN AMRO, Adobe, and many others.
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