The buzz about Web Services gets louder every day. Is it just the latest hype, or is the promise of perfect interoperability, lower costs, and increased efficiency finally going to be fulfilled? Should you jump in now, or wait? Following the groundbreaking P2P Networking Overview from O'Reilly Research, Planning for Web Services guides tech executives and managers through the inflated claims, competing standards, and acronym soup to arrive at a realistic appraisal of Web Services' potential for your business. Through plainspoken, impartial analysis, Planning for Web Services maps out the current state and future prospects of this still-evolving technology, and lays out the critical technical and business issues you'll need to consider. After defining the scope of Web Services, the report looks at how they are being implemented today, and where and how they are likely to take hold in the near future. Topics include:

• How Web Services can replace EDI
• Using Web Services as middleware to create network-aware applications with RPC
• Advantages and hurdles to implementing Web Services on Intranet, Extranet, and public Internet sites

Planning for Web Services profiles more than 30 of the key players in this emerging sector, from major tech companies like Sun, IBM, and Microsoft to startups that are driving much of the innovation in this space. The report concludes with a straightforward checklist of the strategic issues and questions every IT decision-maker should answer before committing to Web Services.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Worth its weight in gold - for decision makers
Comment: This e-book is aimed at CIOs, business and technical decision makers, senior architects and consultants. It is a 150-page PDF document that is well researched, well written description of the strengths and weaknesses of web services, the planning requirements and challenges, and the value proposition for implementing them.

First, it sets the context for web services in a reasonably non-technical manner, staying focused on business issues when possible, but delving into the underlying technology when required. What I like is the balanced view it presents and well formed conclusions and recommendations that reflect no bias towards vendors. I also like the vendor and integrator profiles, description of implementation approaches, and the honest assessments of all.

What makes this book a necessary investment, though, is the comprehensive list of challenges and associated advice for overcoming many of them, and the approach to evaluating web services with respect to both technical and business impacts.

If you're early in the development and implementation phase of web services, or are evaluating them from a strategic vantage point this book will provide an incredible return on your investment (it is pricey) by preventing false starts, implementation disasters and choosing an approach that may be totally wrong for your organization. It will also help you to identify the total costs (and benefits) associated with web services.

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