"EAI used to be a big-budget project that required the building of an entire middleware layer of composite applications that replicated legacy processes. With the standardization that Web services brings, applications can be linked with fewer lines of code, and often within a much shorter time frame," said Joe McKendrick, an analyst with Evans Data. "The savings potential of Web services is enormous."
Other findings from the October 2004 survey of more than 400 developers currently involved with Web services:
- The top three types of services being developed for Web services are: business process management; data management, cleansing and synchronization tools; and e-commerce applications.
- Seventeen percent of survey respondents are using third party consulting to help with Web services projects and another 14 percent plan to use a third party consultant in the next year. The Web services areas in need of the most third party consulting help are: security; design and development; and interfacing to legacy systems.
- Web service development budgets are growing. By next year one of five Web services developers expect to be devoting most of their IT budgets to Web services initiatives.
- When asked about the biggest obstacle to Web services, 20 percent of respondents indicated that interfacing to legacy code is the biggest hurdle to Web services implementations, a year ago only eight percent considered this a problem.
