The Importance of Perseverance

If the preceding section has piqued your interest in Web services read on. But be forewarned: Web services are a new, Web standards-based way to develop distributed, shared applications across disparate computer systems environments over the Internet. Accordingly, Web services discussions are really about "application development environments" a challenging topic that calls upon your perseverance in assimilating it.

For those who persevere and learn the basics of the "Web services" approach/business model, the potential rewards of using it are substantial. You can expect a direct and positive effect in terms of lowering business/transaction costs and application development costs, improving your company's time-to-market in delivering software solutions to your customers and business partners, sharpening your response to competitive pressure, and improving overall business efficiency. Understanding the Web services model can also help your business to take competitive advantage as well as open new sources of revenue by remarketing existing applications.

Understanding the answers to the 10 questions considered in this book will enable business executives to (a) define Web services, (b) extrapolate where Web services fit within their respective organizations, (c) determine how and when to exploit Web services for their organization's strategic and competitive advantage, and (d) understand the criteria for selecting which vendors' products and services should be used to move their enterprises into the Web services world.

So, in other words, please stick with it the time you invest will be rewarded, you will save hundreds of hours of research and analysis, and you will pick up very valuable strategic and competitive information while learning about the evolving world of Web services.