Evolution and revolution  

One attribute of web services that is driving adoption is their evolutionary nature. Developers do not need to learn a lot of new technology to be competent web services developers.

This is not the reason that web services are so powerful, reinventing past paradigms bring revolutionary benefits. What is revolutionary about web services is the ability to create real loosely coupled Service Orientated Architectures. CIO's and architects need to look towards SOA to get the revolutionary benefits of web services.

There is a lot of confusion about what is a good service, it is not an object, it is not a component, it is an interface that provides a business service. A good heuristic is: If the service cannot be described such that a business person understands the value - go back to the drawing board!

posted by John McDowall | 7:42 AM