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Innovation

Our first billion, at last

A couple of months back, Radicati Groupput out an estimate that the Web services market would be worth about$950 million in 2004. Since it's now December, we can assume we're onthe verge of reaching that first billion-dollarmilestone.
Written by Joe McKendrick, Contributing Writer
A couple of months back, Radicati Groupput out an estimate that the Web services market would be worth about$950 million in 2004. Since it's now December, we can assume we're onthe verge of reaching that first billion-dollarmilestone. What a milestone it is. It seems like only yesterday we werefiddling around with SGML code to see what can be done with it beyondpublishing technical manuals. Now it's a billion-dollar industry.
Ofcourse, before we get too giddy, we have to keep things in perspective.Namely, Microsoft will make more money by the end of the first week inJanuary than the combined Web services industry will make all yearlong. (With apologies to my friend Al Gillen over at IDC, who likes to apply this analogy to Linux.)
Still,we're on an upward curve. Radicati predicts that the combined marketfor Web services solutions, management, integration and security willclimb to $6.2 billion by 2008.
Going forward, this may becomea tough market to measure since Web services will likely become aubiquitous part of every systems, software and service deployment.

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