Meta trend
The e-business hosting services market will consolidate around full-service outsourcers and large telecom carriers. By 2004, standalone business-focused Web hosting companies will cease to exist. As hosting prices rise 20 percent to 25 percent in 2002 and 2003, a cross-functional team representing IT groups, lines of business, and procurement organizations will guide hosting purchase decisions. Web services will drive renewed interest in outsourced extranets in 2003 and 2004, achieving operational maturity by 2006.

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Situation
It is clear that the idea of Web services has taken root within the application community. There are optimistic predictions typical of an early-stage concept reminiscent of prior concepts, such as the use of the Internet in delivering e-business, or object technology. Pilot projects to test Web services architecture are growing rapidly, and early internal deployments of very simple applications have begun. However, Meta Group research reveals two significant issues appearing as a result of the hype. First, enterprises and service providers have focused undue attention on the component technologies of Web services and not enough on defining a services-oriented architecture prior to technology selection. Second, a fundamental understanding of Web services impacts on network infrastructure performance and capacity are being overlooked, setting the stage for yet another painful lesson to be relearned in much the same way enterprises and providers continue learning about application networkability.

Futures
During 2002 and 2003, organizations will begin experimenting with elements of Web services, attempting to identify critical infrastructure issues and assessing the networkability of applications developed in those environments. Viewing infrastructure as a collection of components and patterns will expand to include application, technical, and operational services concepts. As Web services mature in 2004 to 2006, application networkability assessments (ANAs) will increasingly be used to rate both purchased Web services solutions and outsourced Web services. Service providers will increasingly use ANA methodologies and adaptive infrastructure strategies to determine infrastructure growth requirements as Web services slowly expand after 2005.

Application services will evolve to utility-grade technical service designs that are part of infrastructure services. Web services will be significantly deployed first within the internal enterprise 2002 and 2003, and later between enterprises after 2004. A unified Web services network architecture will ultimately share a standard access method to those services, after 2007. Existing Web-centric applications, associated multiple points of interaction, and security and identity requirements will contribute substantially to infrastructure deployment complexity, resulting in required network performance improvements.

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