Since the king discovered that the coffers were bare, or at least shrinking,
in 2001, IT spending for big ticket items has been in lockdown mode, while
all the king's men work to put everything bought in '99 and 2000 together.
At a time when newer-generation architectures, such as .NET and J2EE, are
either being rolled out or gaining deeper enterprise acceptance, the push is
on to make better use of existing computing assets - hammer down and be sure
that every last ounce of computing power is squeezed out of those mainframe
applications, those hordes of custom-built applications, the expansive
packaged applications. Above all, cut the operational cost of every
e-business activity we're involved in. Return on investment is a must.
Enter the king's alchemist with vials of new, strange-looking Web services
technology. Or perhaps it's not so strange-looking - Hurwitz Gro... (more)