Hype Hurts Sales Of Web Services Tools

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March 17, 2003 (2:28 PM EST)

Over-hyped and under-performing products will contribute to a flat market this year for Web services tools, a market research firm reported Monday.

Revenues for Web services tools reached $5 billion in 2001, and then slipped 5 percent in 2002, a report from Aberdeen Group said. Sales were expected to be flat this year, and up 5 percent next year, bringing vendors back to the 2001 level. Revenue for the overall tool market this year is projected to reach $750 billion.

Vendors have provided a potpourri of languages, platforms, architectures, and more than two-dozen Web services standards in an attempt to give developers a "quick-and-dirty" implementation of e-business functionality, Aberdeen analyst Wayne T. Kernochan said. The result has been "decreased programmer productivity, spaghetti architectures, and buggy and hard-to-upgrade code."

As a result, vendors have fallen down on providing tools that increase productivity by helping in some of the hardest work -- accessing the backend database.

"I've seen some estimates that indicate up to 30 to 50 percent of the code in writing e-business applications is for accessing the backend database," Kernochan said. "As far as possible, I would want a tool set that really pays attention to that type of thing."

In addition, testing tools can go a long ways toward improving long-term developer productivity by improving the quality of code put in to production the first time, Kernochan said. Techniques such as refactoring can also be useful.

Refactoring is a technique for enhancing or improving code quality in a program without altering the functionality of the software. Instead, it makes the application more maintainable for future changes or upgrades.

To improve overall development of Web services or e-business applications, Kernochan advises businesses to place the acquisition of development tools higher on the priority list and to dedicate more money to buying these products.

Companies also should not expect any one tool set to meet all their needs, so they should be prepared to adopt a "best-of-breed" approach. In addition, chose the Web services platform carefully, since its unlikely applications running on Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, or IBM products will talk to each other easily.

"Your Web services will likely talk best, outside of the organization, with those Web services developed on the same type of environment," Kernochan said. "If you're oriented toward IBM and somebody else is oriented to Microsoft, your Web services will probably not work together as effectively."