SUO: Re:: Missing Ingredients
A report on a recent conference on web services mentioned
some issues that are relevant to the SUO efforts and to
the question about the missing ingredients:
http://www.sys-con.com/webservicesedge2003west/
Web Services Edge 2003
Some excerpts from that web page:
After first citing this week's provocative Gartner
report in which the research company is predicting
that American business is going to "squander $1 billion
on misguided Web services projects by 2007," panel
moderator Anne Thomas Manes asked for panelists' reactions
to the interpretation by this month's CIO Magazine that
there's only one thing holding up Web services, and that's
"The usual suspects: Politics. Ego. Suspicion. Fear. Greed."
... panelist Michael Champion, an advisory research and
development specialist at Software AG, cited complexity
as another issue. "The first thing I'd say is they left
inherent complexity off the list and this is just very,
very hard stuff," Champion said. "There's no doubt
politics is a real issue," as well as ego, he said.
"Maybe I'll blame the marketing people for raising
expectations that Web services were just going to be
magic a couple years ago, but it's really hard to point
the finger at the standards people who are trying to
slog through this to try to find out what it really
means in some sort of consensual way," said Champion.
Several points to note:
1. Businesses are going to "squander $1 billion on
misguided web services projects". That's a lot
more than will be spent on the SUO, but I believe
that if a billion dollars were spent on the current
starting projects, it would be squandered just as
surely as anything squandered on web services.
2. Champion's point about complexity is well taken,
and it certainly applies to the SUO. His verb
"slog through" is appropriate, but I don't
believe that we have yet found out "what it
really means in some sort of consensual way"
(and neither has the W3C, for that matter).
3. And certainly nobody would accuse us of having
a problem with politics and ego.
John Sowa