Hmm, somehow I’m just not too excited about things this year. Perhaps this has something to do with me making the most intriguing prediction – the inevitable death of Web services on the Internet – three years ahead, two years ago.

But first, let’s see how I did with last years predictions

As alluded to above, I said that Web services would continue to struggle for adoption on the Internet, and lo and behold, that’s the case. Ho hum. +1

I also claimed that another high profile public Web service would be released. I can’t think of any really high profile announcements this past year except for eBay I guess, but theirs seems SOAP-only, and isn’t public. Bloglines announced their services, but AFAICT, they’re REST-inspired only with no SOA side. So I guess I flubbed that one.

Ok, so this year, hmmm… As I see it, things have really got to start hitting the fan in the SOA space. To that end, I make the following two predictions;

  • at least one prominent second tier Web services ISV will move away from WS-* and towards an architectural style which adopts a constrained interface, such as REST, MEST, MOM, or one of the Grid styles.
  • a prominent Web services architect will have a Gestalt moment and realize that the Web is actually what Web services have been trying to become since they started down the “document orientation” path in 2001. This person will embrace the Web and REST, though it will be done in a manner which saves face for them and their employer, thereby making it difficult to determine that this is, in fact, what has happened.
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