Microsoft still owns the user community's mind share for Web services, with one in five respondents saying they have deployed the vendor's .Net technology and 40 percent of respondents saying they are evaluating it. But Oracle catapulted to the top spot for current Web services deployments, with nearly a third saying they are using Web services technology from Oracle, though many fewer users (15 percent) said they are evaluating Oracle.
Nearly everyone we interviewed for this story uses some form of Web services. Some use it to connect their back-end systems to customer-facing Web sites, others to let human resources offer pay stubs online and eliminate paper delivery, and still others to perform research projects with partners.
Open-source tools are creeping into the mainstream. Columbia University's biomedical informatics department uses a variety of vendors but encourages use of the Apache Web server, Tomcat Java application server and Open LDAP directory.
"From a stability standpoint, this stuff works," says Fries, who in addition to serving as Columbia's IT manager is a software developer on some research projects. What's more, he says, "We can get into the code and customize it to our needs."
Washington Penn Plastic also switched from Microsoft to open-source tools for development to cut costs, Swider says. The tools are less expensive, to be sure, but that's not the only reason for the shift. "It seemed like Microsoft would change the methodologies every year to drive the need for more tools and training," Swider says. "Open source is more stable."
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