According to Forrester, 11 percent of companies (among 292 cross-industry companies surveyed) already have Web services in production, 17 percent are in pilots and 13 percent are in the rollout phase. Thirty percent of companies are considering adoption, while 22 percent have no plans and the remaining seven percent are unsure.
The majority of implementations are behind the firewall, explains Forrester analyst Bobby Cameron, who wrote the report. However, the “knee-jerk reaction [to go] internal first is wrong,” as plenty of companies (notably in the financial services vertical) have had no problem extending Web services to their partner and customer ecology. Another inference of Web services Cameron dismisses is the notion that implementations have to be top-down. Cameron argues the opposite. “The skill sets required are very low. A person with minimal budget and management approval, and no unique skills, can deliver a Web service in a matter of hours.” Cameron says this is “The same formula that led to the website explosion in the 1990s, with no top-down control.”
Web Services Adoption
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