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Phase
1: Infrastructure
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As usual, the first people who make money on a new technology will
be those intimately involved in the development of the technology
from the ground floor up. Phase I vendors will develop and sell
technology tools and frameworks for building and managing Web Services
applications. Developers and architects are using several first
generation J2EE tools to build applications today. Current marketing
campaigns promote tools and frameworks that will provide the easiest
and fastest Web Service development and implementation.
The challenge for established companies building infrastructure
products will be to innovate fast enough to gain mind share and
revenue with easy to use tools and frameworks. Application server
vendors are optimistic about the prospect of Web Services and are
positioning their products as the deployment platforms for the next
generation of service components. They are vying to be Web Services
command central (in their marketing literature) to connect all the
pieces - applications, integration, and business process management.
Even though these vendors have market dominance and are well entrenched
in the enterprise, there are those who doubt these big guys will
get it right and be able to successfully deliver on this promise.
They "don't know what they don't know" about the difficulties
of building J2EE applications and it will take them too long to
build solutions the users and developers need. In tough economic
times, these companies manage their businesses to return earnings
and positive results. Their focus is on delivering products that
return short-term dollars as opposed to spending a lot of R&D
money on longer-term strategic initiatives that new architectures
require.
We see opportunities for smaller vendors that can bring new products
to market that are flexible, scalable, and compliment the functionality
of the application server while promoting the vision of service
oriented architectures. However, start-ups in this space will be
challenged with building a sustainable business developing discrete
tools only. We do expect that innovative start-ups will quickly
move to develop capabilities that will add several pieces of the
needed functionality to deploy Web Service applications and therefore
define their place in the software mix. But will they be able to
do so profitably? Ultimately, the start-ups who build the tools
that meet the right needs, at the right time, will probably be gobbled
up by larger companies who will in turn integrate their unique technology
into larger solutions.
There is a niche opportunity for start-ups to develop solutions
to specifically manage Web Services and their components. Particularly
as these services are deployed in distributed environments, they
will need to be managed centrally by the IT department. To the degree
that Web Services functionality cuts across traditional enterprise
software vendor boundaries, limitations will be exposed in the management
capabilities offered by each of those vendors. Overlay solutions
will be needed. This creates a start-up opportunity because of the
innovation required and the need for a new third party to arbitrate
between the functionality provided by a number of application vendors.
We expect that a new layer of internal brokering functionality will
be added to the software stack that will direct messages and content
use from enterprise applications to third party Web Service management
applications. These management applications will provide real time
and long-term visibility into the interactions between Web Services
components, and improve the manageability of systemic issues like
business process flow management, performance, security and access
control, policy management, failure analysis, diagnostics, contract
management, format rendering, and version control. There are a few
early stage companies that are moving into this space and are building
products today.
One of the things that will separate the winners from the losers
in this space is how well the tools vendors help make Web Services
more secure by adding digital certificates to the mix. Protocols
and mechanisms to strengthen the security, reliability and workflow
capabilities of Web Services are vital. There is work in progress,
but the approaches of today might not be robust enough for the enterprise
of tomorrow, which may cause interoperability or integration problems
down the road. The goal is to make security a fundamental part of
each Web Service while reducing the complexity during development.
Both start-ups and established security vendors have the opportunity
to score big by improving the confidence level of the security in
Web Services.
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Barbara Angius Saxby (barbara@accelentmarketing.com)
founded Accelent (www.accelentmarketing.com)
to help software startups accelerate marketing strategies, planning,
and execution. She specializes in positioning and launching enterprise
infrastructure and application companies. Barbara is a senior marketing
executive with over 20 years experience in strategic marketing management
and has done extensive work internationally.
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