At least, that will be the case once chief information officers (CIOs) are able to start planning for the future again, following the crunch of time, energy and resources that plagued IT in 2001 and early 2002.

IT Appetite Satiated - For Now

Forrester group director Ted Schadler told NewsFactor that the corporate appetite for new technology is at a near-record low right now. Enterprises instead have focused on getting increased value from applications purchased last year, he said.

According to Schadler, a Forrester survey of 1,000 IT and business managers in North America showed that spending in all areas of IT -- except integration and storage -- had declined over the last year.

Spending on CRM, desktop upgrades, ERP, business services, consultants and e-commerce, Schadler noted, all decreased from the previous year.

"This is sort of like the inventory problem in manufacturing," he said. "Once the inventory is used up, the appetite will come back. It's a 2002 phenomenon, and as to when it's going to break, we think the 'up' pattern starts in 2003."

Web Services Defined

Despite the slowdown in IT spending, Web services implementation topped every analyst's list of future investments.

The term "Web services" is often defined as technology that connects businesses and business partners' computers and networks over the Internet, using tools like Microsoft 's .NET and Sun Microsystems' Java. But according to Schadler, Web services is a technology looking for a precise definition.

"The problem with Web services is that it's an elephant and you're a blind man. Some people see a wall, some people see a snake," he said.

Five-Year Horizon

Schadler pointed to Microsoft, Sun, IBM and Oracle as companies that currently are shipping Web services technologies. But because CIOs are grappling with the challenge of how to wring more value from existing applications, he does not expect to see much demand for new services until 2003.

John Gantz, chief research officer of IDC, told NewsFactor that he foresees a timeline of five years for full implementation of Web services.

"Most companies have thousands of computer applications, so it will be one at a time that they will migrate to Web services tools to integrate, upgrade or replace," Gantz said.

He likened the adoption of Web services to Java's implementation. Before that programming language became widely used, it took several years for companies to determine whether it was a profitable tool; for programmers to perfect their skills; and for applications to be developed.

Wireless Networks Adopted

Enterprise computing also will see the adoption of wireless networks on a larger scale, analysts noted, driven in particular by increased adoption of smaller computing devices, such as PDAs.

Neal Goldman, research director at the Yankee Group, told NewsFactor that he expects more people soon will use handheld devices with souped-up computing power .

"Now, you've got applications which are going to run on these devices that have reasonable computing power," Goldman said. "Web services is going to be the mechanism these things use to communicate with each other, and it all creates a big, huge security problem."

Adopting LANs (continued...)

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