In-Depth

Strike up the band

• By Alan R. Earls
• November 1, 2004

According to a report issued by Sandra Rogers, research director for Web Services Software Service at IDC, vendors and technologies that have historically tackled different areas of application development, integration and deployment environments are now converging to address what she sees as an emerging opportunity: Web services orchestration requirements.

Orchestration involves a development and deployment methodology that abstracts business processes from specific application logic and data sources. It enables the assembly of software components and the specification of rules governing their interaction to execute business processes and workflows. Because this approach leads to different levels of programming, it is often associated with a “multilevel programming model.” But don’t expect nirvana -- far from it. IDC believes this new market could either potentially address, “or possibly add to the complexity of software development.”

“Orchestration technologies are still somewhat new to the marketplace and while it is rather early to start measuring the ultimate benefits of Web services orchestration, there is enough data for a company to begin analyzing whether an investment in orchestration makes sense,” Rogers says.

“Although a desire for building composite applications and fulfilling process integration requirements is pervasive, the tolerance and justification for introducing another technology will be a hurdle that many vendors will initially face,” she notes.

Please see the following related story: “Illusory connectivity: Web sites to databases ” By Alan Earls