The buzz about Web services gets louder every day. Is it just the latest hype, or is the promise of perfect interoperability, lower costs, and increased efficiency finally going to be fulfilled? Following the P2P Networking Overview from O'Reilly Research, "Planning for Web Services" guides tech executives and managers through the inflated claims, competing standards, and acronym soup to arrive at a realistic appraisal of Web services potential for your business. Through plainspoken, impartial analysis, "Planning for Web Services" maps out the current state and future prospects of this still-evolving technology, and lays out the critical technical and business issues you'll need to consider. After defining the scope of Web services, the report looks at how they are being implemented today, and where and how they are likely to take hold in the near future. Topics include: how Web services can replace EDI; using Web services as middleware to create network-aware applications with RPC; and advantages and hurdles to implementing Web services on Intranet, Extranet, and public Internet sites. "Planning for Web Services" profiles more than 30 of the key players in this emerging sector, from major tech companies like Sun, IBM, and Microsoft to startups that are driving much of the innovation in this space. The report concludes with a straightforward checklist of the strategic issues and questions every IT decision-maker should answer before committing to Web services.