Cover Feature%3A Scoring with Web Services

Cover Feature%3A Scoring with Web Services: "Scoring with Web Services%0D%0ABy Kelli Wiseth %0D%0AWeb services are becoming integral to IT%97and to business. %0D%0AAsk Whit Andrews about Web services%2C and he%27ll tell you a story about plastic. At some point%2C explains the Gartner research director%2C %22plastic became integral to a variety of other products and established a new baseline%97consider the dosage cup that%27s packaged with cough medicine these days%97it%27s integral to the product itself%22 in a way that was never imagined when plastic first emerged from the polymer industry. %0D%0AAs with plastic%2C suggests Andrews%2C the uses to which Web services technology is being put today may be vastly different than the uses to which it will be applied in the future. Yet at some point%2C Web services technology %22will no longer provide competitive advantage%97the technology will become a baseline%2C a competitive necessity.%22 As an example%2C Andrews notes how tracking package delivery by phone was at one time a big deal and then that ability became a commodity. At a later point%2C tracking packages %22using the company%27s Web site was news%97and then it became a commodity%2C%22 says Andrews. "