Web Services Starts To Surge

Web services may turn out to be a dream come true for VARs in the near future. According to Gartner Dataquest, 47 percent of enterprises surveyed are planning to use an external service provider for their Web-services solutions or at some point in the planning, implementation or management of these solutions. Gartner Dataquest also predicts that Web services and IT professional services will grow from $56 billion worldwide in 2003 to $283 billion worldwide in 2007. Consequently, through 2005, Gartner Dataquest believes that the largest opportunity for solution providers in Web-services adoption will be in the areas of consulting, development and integration services.

VARBusiness research also finds Web-services implementation on the rise across all sizes of VARs. In our annual State of Technology survey, conducted in October 2004, Web services factored high in the mix of emerging technologies that VARs plan to implement during the next 12 months. More specifically, 47 percent of midsize VARs say they plan to deploy Web services in 2005, up from 38 percent in 2004. Small VARs were not far behind and up from the previous year. Large VARs showed flat growth for 2005, though more than half of them are, and will be, implementing Web services in 2004 and 2005.