“Just about every software maker has embraced “Web services” as its new mantra in the past year, claiming that the trend will revolutionize business and the use of the Internet. Although it was initially met with skepticism, the idea has gained credibility with the support of such industry leaders as Microsoft, IBM and Sun Microsystems. The stakes are particularly high for the software industry, which is trying to revitalize sales in a punishing economy. But before the concept can take off, companies face an uphill battle in convincing customers that they need Web services–and in explaining what they are.” Read the rest of the 4-part feature article at News.com.
Web Services: The Next Big Thing or the Next Big Hype?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
[rant]
Weren’t ASPs going to be the next big thing. This sounds just like a repackaged ASP which is a repackaged whatever. It’s the same stuff dished up over & over. It’s not flying because I don’t think the network is anywhere near ready yet.
My other hat is running an ISP, and I can tell you, a lot of people are struggling to get dialup & DSL to work proeprly, not to mention the many other issues like security and virus propagation that keep cropping up time & again.
There is a fundamental reason why it will probably struggle like every other business trying to make a buck using the internet. The general perception from the end user is that they’ve already had to pay for internet access so why should they pay any more. This goes for just about everything that can be delivered over the web. Somehow because something is electronic in nature people are usually reluctant to pay for anything like that over the net, except when logic goes out the window like porn or online gambling.
The only way it’s going to work if the ISP become the toll man, and frankly I don’t think many ISP’s are in any position to add extra charges to their customer bases. Margins are so low and competition so high that even when they offer an extra service, most people would opt out of the service. If they forced it on the customers with increased charges, the customers will go elsewhere.
It’s basically trying to thrust a range of products onto to customer who have no need for it, or .COM in a nutshell, and we all know where that’s been. .NET is probably a euphemism for .COM anyway.
[/rant]
P
“Web services,” IMHO, is the result of a marketing person saying “let’s make something just because we can and charge people for it,” rather than a businessperson saying “let’s find a niche that needs to be filled, make something useful to consumers and sell it to them.”
There are only so many products and services that can be sold on a subscription basis. The things you would consider “fixtures” in your computer are bad candidates for subscription services…ie staple applications like word processors, spreadsheets. Think of it this way, would you rather plunk down cash one time for a typewriter or perpetually rent it from Royal? The things that are more ephemeral, always being updated and non-reusable are good candidates for subscriptions…ie news, industry data, bottled water. In fact, the ability to reorder bottled water for the water cooler over the web is a web service that could probably work.
btw, I’d also like to say what an honor it is to be posting in the same forum as the man who brought us Trumpet Winsock
The observation of user perception as obstruction is right on the money. That said, here are my perceptions.
There is the “last mile” problem. What drives net useage is the quality of the local phone service, and that ends with a twisted pair. That means dial-up or DSL. 56K doesn’t have the speed necessary for bandwidth. The presence of DSL means no further research in enhancing standard modem technologies. Cost is a prohibitive factor in DSL, along with general distrust of the local phone company.
Cable companies are not the solution either, because they have played out with 70% of US housholds. It is cost prohibitive for them to lay cable to get the other 30%. Moreover, most cable companies can’t find their ass using both hands, even with the map of their choice.
“Web services” is an attempt to turn back the clock to the days of distributed computing. I don’t know how many of you ever had to do work on an actual terminal (as opposed to a PC). It sucks by orders of magnitude.
The “web services” gambit is simply the computing industry trying to take back control, cutting their development costs at the expense of the user, and most importantly, attempting to manage their image a little better. If you have to go through an update routine everytime you use an app, complaints about patch installs would go away, wouldn’t they? Bastards. Now, it’s story time.
I did computer support at Shell Research for a while. The way they had MS Office installed, you only had your configuration files and what not on your PC (about 20M total). The application actually resided on the server.
It was always a pleasure explaining to a scary smart Ph. D. why he or she couldn’t get any work done when the server went down (as it was prone to do on occasion), and having them explain to me how many thousands of dollars a minute Shell was losing, because this particular scientist couldn’t be productive.
Having a Ph. D., the scientist in question was smart enough to come up with a really good solution: They went out for lunch and purchased a full copy of MS Office Pro, installed it, and went back to work. It was explained to them that by doing that, they could no longer use the networked version, and they would have to do their own data backups. The response was always, “Ok. Thanks for telling me.”
Which leads me to my main point. If (fill in the blank) software company thinks I am going to relinquish complete control of my operating environment and applications, placing my self in the postion of having to actually *rely* on a dial-up/network connection of any kind to be productive, they are out of their f*cking minds. I will not drink the Cool-Aid.