ZapThink in the News

August 21, 2003 - Line56 - A Second Look at UDDI "One of the key aspects of the SOA is the dynamic discovery and location independence of the services," says Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink. What Bloomberg means is that a Web service consumer -- which is a piece of software that is looking for a Web service -- shouldn't have to know ahead of time where a particular service is located. Otherwise, if the service is moved or changes, it breaks and we're right back to point-to-point integration. In order to provide that capability you need to have a registry solution as part of the architecture. "It's sort of behind the scenes and not necessarily something that users in a company would know about," Bloomberg says. "It should be something where the software would automatically know how to look up the services it needs instead of assuming it knows where they are." Web service directories may not make sense for a company exposing two or three integration points, but Bloomberg pointed us to high-tech partner integration hub E2open as one hot fishing hole where Web services and the use of UDDI actually turn into B2B process management. August 21, 2003 - InternetNews.com - Web Services Group Releases UDDI V.3 Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at XML and Web services research firm ZapThink, said UDDI has become far more important for service-oriented architectures since the day it was introduced as a global public registry because it can support the discovery and location independence of Web Services. "With some of the new security capabilities in UDDI v3, the standard is even more useful within SOAs, but is also more practical for B2B purposes as well," Bloomberg told internetnews.com. "We still won't see "global yellow pages" applications of UDDI registries, but we're much more likely to see pre-existing groups of business partners using UDDI as an element of their B2B plans." August 20, 2003 - Application Development Trends - Web services 'shock absorber' unveiled Moving Web services management outside the firewall also attracted the attention of Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink (www.zapthink.com), a Waltham, Mass. firm specializing in XML technologies. He said that Flamenco’s focus on management beyond the corporate firewall was a key differentiator between WSM Version 4 and most other management products. The ability to manage Web services beyond the firewall makes it possible for companies to move beyond internal integration "to more sophisticated, strategic deployments of Web services-based Service-Oriented Architectures that solve critical cross-organization integration and business issues," according to Schmelzer. August 19, 2003 - eBizQ.net - Actional Takes Action For BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 "Many organizations embracing Web services and crafting service-oriented architectures today are choosing the BEA platform as the core of their Web services efforts," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC. "The introduction of the Actional for BEA product line provides these organizations with access to powerful, active Web services management capabilities. Even more crucial is how the Actional for BEA products enable SOAs across the entire application development lifecycle, empowering organizations to build flexible, dynamic SOA implementations from within their preferred development and deployment environment." August 19, 2003 - ADT and ZapThink Press Release - ZapThink and Application Development Trends Announce Landmark Service-Oriented Architecture Implementation Poster Application Development Trends and ZapThink LLC announced today the release of a landmark poster "ZapThink's Path to Service-Oriented Architecture Implementation." Service-oriented architectures (SOAs) based on Web Services provide cost-effective approaches to building agile application infrastructures. ZapThink's roadmap to SOA adoption poster provides companies of all sizes and industries an at-a-glance view at how to implement SOAs in a way that delivers ROI at each step. "ZapThink is thrilled to be working with ADT to get this poster into the hands of IT architects, developers, and executives," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC. "This poster illustrates the most important SOA implementation considerations, making the poster a useful, valuable resource for years to come." August 18, 2003 - InfoWorld - Flamenco adds 'shock absorber' to Web services "What they're really saying here is that we can expect the Web services specs to be in considerable flux for a long period of time," said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, in an e-mail response to questions. "As such, many developers are simply throwing their hands up in the air and deciding to wait until the Web services specs are done before doing anything with Web services. Clearly, this is not a good thing for Flamenco, so what they are doing is saying that they will handle a lot of the Web services specs in their product on behalf of the developers that connect to the product, and the product will keep up with the latest specs, thus eliminating the need for developers to have to constantly stay in touch," he said. "This level of 'spec' management will no doubt come in very handy to Web services developers," Schmelzer said. August 18, 2003 - Flamenco Press Release - Flamenco Networks Releases New Web Services Management Software Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, sees Flamenco WSM Version 4 as an important advancement in the current state of Web services management solutions. "Flamenco's WSM product is differentiated from many existing WSM products by providing functionality that is focused on managing Web services across the corporate firewall, rather than just those that reside on the corporate network," says Schmelzer. "As a result of these advanced features, companies are moving beyond basic, point-to-point usage of Web services for simple integration tasks to more sophisticated, strategic deployments of Web services-based Service-Oriented Architectures that solve critical cross-organization integration and business issues." August 18, 2003 - ComputerWorld - Group Releases Set of Guidelines for Building Interoperable Web Services The Basic Profile guidelines are intended for vendors, large corporations and industry consortia developing software and tools that can be used to write Web services, said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass. "A lot of the gray areas with the basic Web services standards are now resolved, and we can move on to the more challenging areas: security, management, reliability and transactions," Bloomberg said. August 18, 2003 - eBizQ.net - Flamenco Networks Dances With New Web Services Management Software Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, sees Flamenco WSM Version 4 as an important advancement in the current state of Web services management solutions. "Flamenco's WSM product is differentiated from many existing WSM products by providing functionality that is focused on managing Web services across the corporate firewall, rather than just those that reside on the corporate network," says Schmelzer. "As a result of these advanced features, companies are moving beyond basic, point-to-point usage of Web services for simple integration tasks to more sophisticated, strategic deployments of Web services-based Service-Oriented Architectures that solve critical cross-organization integration and business issues." August 15, 2003 - SD Times - Interoperability on the Way Ron Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst of ZapThink LLC, an analysis house specializing in XML and Web services, isn’t sure it’s a major step in some ways. “Basic Profile is an appropriate name. It addresses the lowest level of interoperability: WDSL, SOAP and UDDI. Still, it shows that the WS-I can get a profile done. And it also shows that the WS-I really isn’t a standards organization, as some feared, but an interoperability organization.” While technically the Basic Profile may be no great shakes, from a business point of view it’s another matter entirely. “If end users drive it and the vendors support it, it will hopefully become the gold standard for WS interoperability,” said Schmelzer, who added that this “will go a long way to getting us out of the Wild West period of Web services development. Their work, according to Schmelzer, has been quite valuable. SOAPBuilders has been “very helpful for practical implementations.” Between the two—WS-I at the high conceptual level and SOAPBuilders at the nitty-gritty level—Web services are moving closer to real-world, multiple vendor interoperability. August 2003 - Sonic Software Presentation (Video) - Ron Schmelzer Speaks on Business Agility In this video, ZapThink analyst Ronald Schmelzer speaks on a range of topics relevant to Web Services and SOAs: business agility, the "real time enterprise", and Enterprise Service Buses (ESBs). August 14, 2003 - SearchDatabase (TechTarget) - Sybase takes new approach to messaging "Usually, databases take a query-and-wait approach," said Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at the Waltham, Mass.-based research firm ZapThink LLC. "In this case, you'll be able to tell your database to keep looking at the data warehouse, and to continue to keep this analytical information ready for when it's needed." Sybase's main competitors are the three largest database vendors -- IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. Those three companies each address messaging in similar ways. From an architectural viewpoint, those companies place the messaging service in its own application server, according to Bloomberg. "It's a new twist on an old story," said Bloomberg, referring to the Sybase approach. ZapThink specializes in analyzing trends in Java, XML and Web Services. August 13, 2003 - Reactivity Press Release - Reactivity Secures $10.3 Million Investment According to industry analysts at ZapThink, a firm that focuses on XML and Web Services, the XML and Web Services security market is expected to reach $4.4 billion by 2006. August 13, 2003 - InternetWeek - WS-I's Basic Profile Spec For Interoperability Falls Short Analysts said the WS-I's work was a good start, but noted that the more difficult tasks lie ahead. "Most real-world implementations of web services are already well beyond these basic requirements," Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for market researcher ZapThink LLC, said. "Developers have to think about security, management, process, reliability and additional transports. As such, the WS-I will have to release much more detailed interoperability profiles to handle these requirements -- and this is where it will get more tricky." Vendors have yet to agree on specifications for some of these requirements, so comprehensive interoperability is still only a goal, with no guarantee of success. "The vendors are wary about (customer) lock-in, but it seems they are using the standards organizations as a proxy for their particular interests," Schmelzer said. August 12, 2003 - SearchWebServices - Looming standards war: Who controls the future of Web services? part one "The W3C has a very formal, very deliberative process," says Ron Schmelzer, Senior Analyst with the Web services consulting group ZapThink. "It can take two or three years from draft to recommendation. OASIS, on the other hand, works on more of a community process and it's much easier for a spec to come out quickly. That makes it easier to throw something on the wall to see what sticks. So OASIS is good for moving quickly on standards, but the standards can have varying usefulness and quality. They did UDDI and that was very solid. But they also did the Election Markup Language and the Human Markup Language, which were not so solid." August 12, 2003 - Application Development Trends - From the XML Web Services One Conference: Profiles will help in Web services building Moderator Ron Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst at research firm ZapThink, asked what newly brewing WS-I means to users. Bill Stangel, senior VP and enterprise architect at Fidelity Investments Systems Co., said such profiles cut down on the setup and test work that end users previously had to create for themselves. "Interoperability is everything to us. The profile helps us," said Stangel. August 12, 2003 - SearchWebServices - WS-I releases interoperability road map One analyst said Basic Profile 1.0 is just as its name implies -- basic -- but that it is an important first step in building user confidence in Web services. "It's a starting point," said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst for ZapThink LLC, in Waltham, Mass. "It's not over by any means." Schmelzer said this release is the first major action taken by the vendor-backed WS-I, and it will be scrutinized carefully. "This is sort of their critical crossroads," he said. If developers find that the guidelines don't provide true specification interoperability, the WS-I's credibility will suffer. Conversely, if a vendor claims that its product adheres to the guidelines and the Test Tools prove otherwise, that vendor will be the one to suffer user backlash." August 12, 2003 - InfoWorld - WS-I releases Web services interoperability plan An analyst stressed that the profile represents the first deliverable from WS-I. "Up until now, [the profile has] has been theory and works in progress, but now they have the profile available," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, in Waltham, Mass. Bloomberg said the profile at this point primarily is for vendors to make their offerings interoperable. WS-I needs to add more user organizations to its fold, he said. August 12, 2003 - eWeek - WS-I Basic Profile 1.0 Makes Debut Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, Cambridge, Mass., has a different view. "At this point in time, the WS-I faces two great challenges, one internal and one external," Bloomberg said. "Their internal challenge is recruiting more IT end-user members. To be truly relevant, they must have a balance between vendors and end-users, and their membership is currently skewed toward vendors. Ron Schmelzer, Bloomberg's ZapThink colleague added: "In general, I think the WS-I is doing a good job of staying above the fray in the current, noisy Web services specifications environment. As they establish the value of the WS-I Profiles, hopefully software vendors will realize that it's in their best interests to make sure they are all truly interoperable. Having the WS-I's 'stamp of approval' will be one way to prove to the public that they are as interoperable as they claim. As the WS-I tackles more tricky profiles—such as security, management and process—these 'stamps of approval' will become increasingly more important." August 12, 2003 - Internetnews.com - WS-I Publishes Basic Profile 1.0 Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with XML research firm ZapThink, and moderator of the WS-I panel at the XML Web Services One conference Tuesday, said the Basic Profile is also a critical litmus test for WS-I as an organization. "What is most important about the WS-I Basic Profile is not just the content itself (although what they are hoping to standardize from an interoperability perspective is incredibly important), but rather the fact that this is the first Profile that the WS-I will release," Schmelzer told internetnews.com. "How this profile is adopted among end users and software vendors, and how it's used in the context of the ever-increasing set of specifications will determine how successful the WS-I is in the long-term. Thus, the WS-I must do all it can to make sure the Basic Profile is adopted and used as widely used as possible. If they can get this Profile adopted across all end user types and within the vendors of Web Services software and solutions, then it bodes well for future Profile releases, which will be much more complex than this Basic Profile." August 12, 2003 - Integration Developer News - Developer Guide to WS-I's Final Basic Profile 1.0 Vendors can use the Basic Profile to build software products that are guaranteed to interoperate with other software that supports the Profile, and IT end-users can also build custom software that supports the Profile to guarantee interoperability with software products that support the Profile, Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at ZapThink, told IDN. The Basic Profile will ensure devs that their primary web services components will interoperate across vendors' platforms. "It's important to point out that the WS-I basic profile isn't a spec or standard in its own right, but rather a set of guidelines and tools for using certain standards, in this case SOAP and WSDL," Bloomberg added. Could Basic Profile 1.0 be a "starter gun" for enterprise developers looking to begin to build complex point-to-multipoint web services for their enterprise or B2B needs. "I wouldn't go so far as to say that the release of the Basic Profile is the starter gun for enterprise developers, but maybe a sign that the warm-up lap is complete," Bloomberg told IDN. "Keep in mind that there are many standards and specs that haven't yet made it into a WS-I profile, including security, management and reliability specs. " While these more complex specs are on the WS-I's near-term road map, ZapThink founder and senior analyst, Ronald Schmelzer, emphasizes the Profile’s rudimentary nature at present. "The Basic Profile is just that -- basic. It just addresses the primary and most basic interoperability concerns of getting SOAP 1.2, WSDL 1.1, and UDDI 2.0 to work together. Most real-world implementations of web services are already well beyond these basic requirements," he added. "Developers will have to wait until the WS-I includes them in future Profiles before the developers can be assured of interoperability out of the box." August 12, 2003 - Integration Developer News - BEA Confronts J2EE Productivity, Integration Gaps Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at Zapthink, a web services analyst firm in Waltham, Mass. said the BEA move is simply a sign to things to come, as development tools all embrace integration-enabling technologies. "I don't think that there is thing as a separately definable market for 'lifecycle dev-to-integration,'" Schmelzer told IDN. "The truth is that most application server vendors, development tool vendors, and the emerging class of Service-oriented integration vendors are all going to have to produce 'build-to-integrate' tool suites," he said. "What we're seeing is the entire class of development tools mature -- not separate into different markets. "Basically," Schmelzer added, "developers are being increasingly called to develop not just point solutions, but reusable Service components that are going to have to easily integrate in heterogeneous environments. So, what development tools vendor would NOT want to be in this space?" August 11, 2003 - OMG Press Release - Integrate 2003 to Feature Web Services Standards Panel and Keynote by Sun Microsystems' CTO Panelists from the W3C, The Open Group, OASIS and WS-I will discuss the future of Web Services standards. Conference sessions will focus on business integration strategy, four of which will be delivered by analysts from The Burton Group, Aberdeen Group, META Group and Zapthink. View the complete program at http://www.integrate2003.com/program. August 11, 2003 - e-Pro Magazine - Two Federated Identity Specs Complicates Web Services Security “The big part of this story is that Liberty Alliance has also been working on federated identity,” said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink, an XML and Web services technology research firm. “One difference is that the IBM/Microsoft group is working on a whole road map, while Liberty Alliance has been working on just federated identity. It's really just two different approaches — one is broader and more comprehensive and the other is narrower and deeper.” August 10, 2003 - WebServices.org - Grand Central Promotes Loosely-Coupled, But Level Playing Field Some analysts say Grand Central's interoperability network is more comparable to the roles played by VANs in traditional EDI transactions - with important differences. "Grand Central provides a loosely-coupled framework," relates Jason Bloomberg, analyst with ZapThink. "The network leverages the loosely coupled nature of Web services to make it possible for participating companies to change their interfaces without breaking the connections to the Network, while simultaneously lowering their cost of integration." Bloomberg also points out that Grand Central "provides a shared infrastructure, while EDI VANs are strictly point-to-point, store and forward networks. The Grand Central Network can connect multiple companies in either a synchronous or asynchronous fashion, depending upon the needs of the participants." August 8, 2003 - The Daily Deal - Interwoven deal presages more CM deals Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Web services research firm, said sales of content management software could surpass $11 billion by 2008, compared with $1.8 billion this year. Ovum Ltd. is more conservative in its estimate, projecting content management technology sales of $2 billion by 2007. The industry is ripe for consolidation, Schmelzer said, noting that corporate buyers increasingly want to buy a content package and related management software from a single seller. "People don't want to purchase multiple pieces of the puzzle from different vendors," he said. "I think this merger came about from customers demanding integration." August 7, 2003 - CNet and BusinessWeek - Microsoft Web services plan targets Java The healthy adoption of its Visual Studio.Net development tool has led Microsoft to claim that the product has surpassed J2EE-based alternatives in usage. But whether customers will prefer Microsoft's Windows-centric Web services strategy or an operating system-neutral approach remains to be seen, said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at research firm ZapThink. "Will people value interoperability over code portability? We don't know. I don't think there's a long enough track record in Web services," Schmelzer said. August 7, 2003 - The Globe and Mail - Microsoft's new Office suite may be a gamble "Not much is happening with regards to adoption of XForms," ZapThink analyst Ron Schmelzer told CNET News this week. "As a result, without any real pressure to develop and release products, there is little motivation to speed the spec through the lengthy W3C process. . . . It will take some serious interest by vendors and/or end-user customers to make things happen more expediently." August 7, 2003 - CNet - Kenamea delves further into Web services "Kenamea realized that messaging wasn't going to be enough, as it is such a competitive market and the appeal is mostly to developers," Schmelzer said. "The composite applications business should give Kenamea the ability to connect with business users looking for tools that don't require the same levels of development knowledge; messaging with Web services is a nice combination." August 5, 2003 - CNet and BusinessWeek - Ascential joins business buying spree This will probably not be Ascential's only purchase, said Ron Schmelzer, an industry analyst at ZapThink. The company "wants to build a suite of architectural components, supporting tools, and a framework by which companies can mix and match integration technologies as they need," said Schmelzer. "I think this will be just the first of what will no doubt be a few notable acquisitions by this company." August 5, 2003 - CNet and BusinessWeek - Online forms standard gets a push "Not much is happening with regards to adoption of XForms," Ron Schmelzer, analyst with ZapThink, wrote in an e-mail interview. "As a result, without any real pressure to develop and release products, there is little motivation to speed the spec through the lengthy W3C process...All is quiet on the W3C XForms front and it will take some serious interest by vendors and/or end-user customers to make things happen more expediently." August 4, 2003 - eWeek - Spec Unifies Web Services "What's needed is for these vendors to all work together to solve common, big issues, not to create a whole onslaught of specifications, each of which solves one particular part of an overall puzzle," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market research company. "The result will be a mass of confusing, and probably noninteroperable, specifications," Schmelzer said. "At some point, these are all going to need to be tied together, anyway, so why wait for the customer or the WS-I [Web Services Interoperability Organization] to do it?" August 4, 2003 - TechWeb - Red Hat Files Complaint Against SCO Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for market research firm ZapThink LLC, said Red Hat is looking to put the "kabosh" to all FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) that SCO has introduced among Linux users. "By making it clear that developing products and solutions in Open Source will not increase a company's liability, and by staking its claim through its formal complaint against SCO and their legal 'defense fund,' Red Hat hopes to champion the very industry that gave them a reason for being," Schmelzer said. "The company also serves as a rallying point for the legions of small Linux and open source developers that are counting on an unfettered market for their products." August 1, 2003 - SearchWebServices - UDDI Learning Guide Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for market research firm ZapThink: "For a while, UDDI has been the red-headed stepchild of web services. People would talk about it, but they really weren't quite clear on how it fit in." August 1, 2003 - InternetNews - IBM, CA Preparing Web Services Management Spec One analyst who covers Web services developments extensively isn't buying it. "On the comment that it's not like BPEL, I beg to differ," said ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer. "While it's true that in this case we can avoid the ugly situation of competing standards bodies, somebody still has to declare a victor. What, is this going to come down to a vote? Who's going to vote? Will it be whoever can get the most vendors on their side, or will it be a vote by customer implementations? Which really matters? All this spec battling is missing the real point. Schmelzer continued: "It's really easy to fight among vendors to determine which spec gets approved by OASIS, but it's much harder to get your customers to adopt that particular spec. I think vendors should stop focusing on trying to gain market share through winning specification battles and start figuring out how to get their customers to adopt specifications that are in their best interest. At the end, the specification that's the most implemented always wins -- even if it never sees the light of day of any standards group." July 31, 2003 - PocketPC City - Intel Joins Eclipse Consortium However, ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg downplayed that thinking, noting that it doesn't mean Intel will support Microsoft less, "just that they will be adding Eclipse to their grab bag of software capabilities." "I don't see that this announcement has any major implications for Microsoft," Bloomberg said. "Remember, Intel wants to drive the market for their chips, so they don't really care who's brand of software is running on them." July 30, 2003 - InternetNews - Intel Joins Eclipse Consortium However, ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg downplayed that thinking, noting that it doesn't mean Intel will support Microsoft less, "just that they will be adding Eclipse to their grab bag of software capabilities." "I don't see that this announcement has any major implications for Microsoft," Bloomberg said. "Remember, Intel wants to drive the market for their chips, so they don't really care who's brand of software is running on them." July 30, 2003 - eWeek - Intel Joins Open-Source Tools Consortium "Intel's primary focus is to drive the market for their chips, and they don't really care whose brand of software is running on them," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass.-based market research firm. "I doubt that Intel's participation in Eclipse will cause any problems to the Wintel duopoly—after all, Eclipse software runs on Windows. As companies move up the layers of abstraction to Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures, it becomes less important what operating systems or hardware platforms are under the covers, so Intel is simply trying to cover their bets so that their chips are found in as many places as possible." July 29, 2003 - Line56 - .NET Rewarding Developers Meanwhile, the Whidbey version of Visual Studio .NET features a raft of enhancements (including security, administration, and performance tweaks) with a common bottom line: attractiveness to the developer community, according to Bloomberg. "In the early days of VB.NET, it was an object-oriented version and there was a risk Microsoft would lose developers because object-oriented programming is more of a challenge," he says. He believes that the new Visual Studio .NET is not only easy to use but also has something to offer to "senior developers who want to get into C Sharp as well as Visual C++." July 29, 2003 - eWeek - New Spec Tackles Web Services Coordination "What's needed is for these vendors to all work together to solve common, big issues, not to create a whole onslaught of specifications, each of which solves one particular part of an overall puzzle," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass.-based market research firm. "The result will be a mass of confusing, and probably non-interoperable, specifications. At some point, these are all going to need to be tied together anyway, so why wait for the customer or the WS-I [Web Services Interoperability Organization] to do it?" July 29, 2003 - CRN - Sun, Partners Publish New Web Services Spec "The truth is that there is no reason why these folks could not have worked with Microsoft/IBM in the context of BPEL and the WS-Transaction set of specifications to come up with a particular implementation of these specs," Ron Schmelzer, analyst for web services specialist ZapThink LLC, said. "In essence, this is a 'divide-and-conquer' strategy." By taking a particular problem, in this case coordinating transactions across multiple web services, and developing specs addressing minute problem areas, Sun et al. are "hoping to sway users intoparticular implementations that use their specs, which of course, IBM and Microsoft will simply not support," Schmelzer said. July 29, 2003 - Japan.Internet.com - 5社が協力し、Web サービス仕様草案を発表 ZapThink の上級アナリスト、Ronald Schmelzer 氏と Jason Bloomberg 氏は、この問題について、特定の問題を複数のベンダーが (協力して解決するどころか) 細切れにしている事例のひとつだと言う。 July 29, 2003 - SearchWebServices (TechTarget) - .NET rewarding Web services developers New announcements by Microsoft about the .NET framework confirm that the software maker is committed to the platform as the basis for all of its XML and Web services products, according to ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg. He said adding Web Services Enhancements 2.0 to the next generation of .NET will encourage more developers to work with newly released security standards while they are developing their external Web services applications. July 28, 2003 - InternetNews - Companies Team on Web Services Transaction Spec The trinity of specs share some things in common with previously announced specs such as ebXML (define) and certainly rubs shoulders with the WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction schemas from Microsoft, IBM and others. How are they different? ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer said WS-CAF is focused on the B2B-oriented transactions, which is a more focused and specific problem than the more general reliable, transacted processes solved by the WS-Transaction and WS-Coordination specs. Schmelzer and his colleague, ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg, called this issue another case of vendors chopping up a particular problem into small pieces. "In essence, this is a "divide-and-conquer" strategy," Schmelzer told internetnews.com. "By dividing up a much larger, more significant problem area into more minute problem areas, these vendors (that are struggling to become Web Services leaders) are hoping to sway users into particular implementations that use their specs, which of course, IBM and Microsoft will simply not support." July 28, 2003 - TechWeb - Sun, Partners Publish New Web Services Spec "The truth is that there is no reason why these folks could not have worked with Microsoft/IBM in the context of BPEL and the WS-Transaction set of specifications to come up with a particular implementation of these specs," Ron Schmelzer, analyst for web services specialist ZapThink LLC, said. "In essence, this is a 'divide-and-conquer' strategy." By taking a particular problem, in this case coordinating transactions across multiple web services, and developing specs addressing minute problem areas, Sun et al. are "hoping to sway users intoparticular implementations that use their specs, which of course, IBM and Microsoft will simply not support," Schmelzer said. July 28, 2003 - GRID Today - Actional Updates Its Web Services Management Platform "Actional has taken a unique approach to Web services management," stated Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst, ZapThink. "Unlike other Web services management solutions, which require an enterprise-wide roll out to achieve a positive ROI, Actional enables customers to take a phased approach that yields positive ROI at every step. Application development groups creating Web services can implement SOAPstation at the project level. Later, the operations team can benefit from the deployment of Actional Looking Glass. Actional's products thus lower the risk and increase the value of building service- oriented architectures." July 23, 2003 - Line56 - Web Services Management Progress Any description of Web services inevitably sounds very conceptual, so analyst Jason Bloomberg of ZapThink puts it in ordinary business terms. "Say you're a financial services company that's contracted with a publisher for reporting information," he explains. "As a consumer of that Web service, you want to make sure the stuff is available and meets SLAs [service-level agreements] for availability and latency." Bloomberg is quick to point out that the monitoring aspect is ahead of cross-firewall management for a simple reason. "Within an IT organization, you need no standards," he says. "You only need standards when trying to manage something that belongs to someone else." July 22, 2003 - Actional Press Release - Actional Announces Update to Web Services Management Platform "Actional has taken a unique approach to Web services management," stated Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst, ZapThink. "Unlike other Web services management solutions, which require an enterprise-wide roll out to achieve a positive ROI, Actional enables customers to take a phased approach that yields positive ROI at every step. Application development groups creating Web services can implement SOAPstation at the project level. Later, the operations team can benefit from the deployment of Actional Looking Glass. Actional's products thus lower the risk and increase the value of building service-oriented architectures." July 22, 2003 - TechWeb - SCO Buys Web Services Tool Vendor Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for market research firm ZapThink LLC, said the acquisition was interesting because of Vultus's focus on the presentation layer of web services applications. "It's a bold move by SCO, since not even IBM or Microsoft have put a lot of thought or emphasis on the presentation layer of web services," Schmelzer said. "It's also necessary since SCO doesn't have any strong presentation layer capabilities of their own." July 21, 2003 - InfoWorld - Actional boosts Web services broker "[Actional is] solving the general problem of how to manage a distributed network of Web services-enabled systems. As you can imagine, this is a difficult and challenging problem for IT managers and developers," said analyst Ronald Schmelzer, of Zapthink, in Waltham, Mass. July 21, 2003 - InternetNews.com - HP Offers Web Services Schema to OASIS "HP is making an aggressive push with their Adaptive Enterprise initiative, and the effort to contribute WSMF, which is very "complimentary" to their commercial Darwin Reference Architecture, is clearly a move to out-step the competition (notably IBM, Computer Associates, and the emerging class of WS Management vendors) for a Web Services-based management spec," said ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer. ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg said the play shows HP's dedication to its adaptive enterprise strategy since turning its focus to its OpenView management platform since its Compaq purchase. "As with any established player, they must innovate carefully to avoid alienating their established customer base, but that being said, today's announcement shows that HP is committed to being a Web Services management leader," Bloomberg said. July 21, 2003 - TechWeb - HP Submits Web Service Management Spec To OASIS "It's not the first, but it might be the most significant," Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for high-tech researcher ZapThink LLC, said. "HP is making an aggressive push with their Adaptive Enterprise initiative, and the effort to contribute WSMF, which is very complimentary to their commercial Darwin Reference Architecture, is clearly a move to out-step the competition." July 21, 2003 - Application Development Trends - Wakesoft answers SOA call The primary advantage to the enterprise of a so-called Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is its ability to enable development of agile business processes and IT systems that are flexible enough to respond quickly to change. At least that's the conclusion of ZapThink senior analyst Jason Bloomberg. In his recently published report "Service-Oriented Architecture Tools & Best Practices: Beyond Point-to-Point Web Services," Bloomberg contends that "Reworking existing brittle, high-cost IT infrastructures into flexible, Service-oriented architectures promises substantial long-term cost savings and revenue opportunities through increased business agility." July 21, 2003 - InformationWeek - Clear Methods' Language Gets Cool Greeting "Water is a full-featured object-oriented programming language, expressed in XML. It does more than Java does," says Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with Zap Think, an XML-oriented research group. It was designed to include security measures in the code so that it can move safely over the network. Water has built-in restrictions that prohibit it from calling files off a user's hard drive or changing the system software where it resides, he adds. Because it uses XML syntax, "it's not learning a new language for seasoned developers. They're already conversant in with XML," Bloomberg notes. July 17, 2003 - InternetNews - Is Adobe Targeting Microsoft's InfoPath? Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with XML research firm ZapThink said he feels organizations may find that InfoPath and Adobe's eventual offering may be complementary. "Adobe and Microsoft, while going after similar users (the non-technical 'information worker') are really solving different problems and coming at it from two different approaches -- each leveraging their own strengths," Schmelzer said. "Adobe's product is aimed at the universe of people who are trying to automate the process of filling in forms that must then be submitted to some automated, electronic process. This document-automation, workflow-oriented bent is clearly illustrated in their desire for the forms to look and act like traditional PDF forms (or even paper-based forms) while having advanced functionality that is primarily hidden from the user who is filling out the form. In essence, Adobe is trying to smarten-up the forms submission and human workflow-oriented processes without having to re-educate the user. July 17, 2003 - CNet - Rivalry bogs down Web services With the software industry betting on Web services standards as the basis for many software systems, customers can expect a continuation of the high-stakes politics and battles among computing providers, said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at research firm ZapThink. "There's going to be a lot more of this (conflict) as problems get more complex," Schmelzer said. "As specifications take on more complicated issues like security, business process (automation) and service levels, they become competitive differentiation for products." July 17, 2003 - ECIN (German) - Web Services nach dem Hype – warum Unternehmen jetzt aktiv werden sollten „In den nächsten Jahren wird es weniger darum gehen, neue Anwendungen zu entwickeln“, sagen auch Ronald Schmelzer und Jason Bloomberg, Analysten beim amerikanischen Marktforschungsunternehmen ZapThink. „Die Aufgabe besteht vielmehr darin, bestehende Anwendungen zu integrieren und wiederzuverwenden.“ Web Services bieten eine kostengünstige und einfache Alternative zu EAI-Produkten und können Unternehmen außerdem den Einstieg ins eBusiness erleichtern. Was aber sind Web Services und wie funktioniert die Technologie? July 16, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Clear Methods Airs Latest Steam Engine Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst of XML and Web services research firm ZapThink, said products like Steam and languages like Water could gain traction among major vendors like Microsoft, Sun Microsystems or IBM because Web services deployment is still very nascent. However, his colleague, ZapThink senior analyst Jason Bloomberg, isn't so sure folks are buying into the allure of Water just yet. He acknowledged the new features were nice, but nothing earth-shattering. July 16, 2003 - Information Security Magazine - Microsoft, IBM Push Ahead with Web Services Security Standard The WS-Federation Language specs are significant, because federation is a core component of the Sun-led Liberty Alliance effort, says ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg. In the past, the Alliance downplayed suggestions it's racing the Microsoft-IBM push, saying the two complement each other in many ways. Bloomberg thinks the dueling standards will eventually have to be merged, with Liberty Alliance having the slight advantage of including end users in the development process. "There's no benefit for the customers to have two standards," Bloomberg says. July 16, 2003 - InternetWeek - Following An Architecture For Web Services Even if not geared initially as a Web service, the structure of the applications makes it easier to add the Web services later. The platform "enables project teams to deliver systems ready for a services-oriented-architecture in phases," says Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, an XML and Web-services analyst firm. An application could first be given connectivity to HTTP, then at a later date get the benefit of having its output parsed into XML to keep in step with user requirements, he notes. July 16, 2003 - SearchSecurity (TechTarget) - Application firewalls good enough -- for now -- for Web services security While functions such as identity management will become increasingly important, "If somebody can just look at the content of a SOAP message and pick out your credit card number, it doesn't help much," says Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at ZapThink LLC, a Web services research firm in Waltham, Mass. July 16, 2003 - CW360 - Wakesoft enables services-oriented architecture "Wakesoft is one of the few companies that is focused on building a tool that supports a services-oriented architecture (SOA) out of the box," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. "[Wakesoft's platform] provides the development environment as well as management and other capabilities that are needed to build an SOA," Bloomberg said. But Wakesoft will face a challenge in that it has to provide the correct adapters, management services and development tools, said Bloomberg. July 15, 2003 - SD Times - Web Services Inching, Not Bounding, Along However, standards bodies have been working for more than two years, pointed out Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC (www.zapthink.com), which specializes in tracking Web services. ZapThink estimates that worldwide Web services spending was roughly US$1.8 billion in 2002, but that it should exceed $5 billion next year. July 15, 2003 - InfoWorld - Wakesoft enables services-oriented architectures An analyst described Wakesoft's offering as an architecture server on top of a middleware architecture. "Wakesoft is one of the few companies that is focused on building a tool that supports a services-oriented architecture [SOA] out of the box," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, in Waltham, Mass. July 15, 2003 - Integration Developer News - Devs Should Brace for Wave of Process, Modeling Tools IDN has, and will, go in-depth on many of these new tools, what developers say about them and how (if at all) they are changing their day-to-day jobs. But, to get the big picture, however, this week we turn to a recent report from ZapThink, a web services research firm in Waltham, Mass. ZapThink researchers say these latest announcements from big vendors is just the beginning of a new emphasis on process-driven tools for integration -- and even all-out migration. In addition, the recent report says developers should brace themselves for a new wave of web services tools and IDE plug-ins that support process-driven services for Java and .NET. Developers will soon see a new wave of web services tools and IDE extensions to support process-driven services, according to ZapThink's latest report, "Service-Oriented Process." July 14, 2003 - Wakesoft Press Release - Wakesoft Launches New Architecture Platform for Delivering Services-Oriented Systems Today "While Service Oriented Architecture initiatives are beginning to take hold in enterprises today, project teams still have to meet short-term delivery requirements," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. "The Wakesoft Architecture Platform provides a structure that enables project teams to deliver SOA-ready systems in phases, delivering positive ROI at every step -- a key differentiator in this market." July 14, 2003 - eBizQ.net - Wakesoft Upgrades Architecture Platform "While Service Oriented Architecture initiatives are beginning to take hold in enterprises today, project teams still have to meet short-term delivery requirements," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. "The Wakesoft Architecture Platform provides a structure that enables project teams to deliver SOA-ready systems in phases, delivering positive ROI at every step - a key differentiator in this market." July 14, 2003 - eWeek - Sun Objects to Microsoft's Web Services Workshop Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market research firm, said Sun and the leaders of the WS-RM specification "are each pitching products at different locations on the Web services continuum, and thus have their own agendas when proposing a specification. It's hard to tell which standard will win since it's hard to tell what customers are really going to implement—and in the end, it's the customers that will decide which specs will be important." July 14, 2003 - eWeek - Microsoft, IBM Team on Spec Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market researcher, said a question surrounding WS-Federation is how it will play out alongside the Liberty Alliance's ID-Federation Framework. "Liberty is further along in its work on federation specifications, and there are a good number of companies—in particular, non-IT companies—that back Liberty. Clearly, because identity federation means getting dissimilar identity mechanisms to work together, it doesn't make sense to have more than one identity federation standard," Bloomberg said. "Only time will tell which approach will win out." July 14, 2003 - TechWeb - CA Unveils Web Services Tools "In this area, CA lags considerably behind some of the other management offerings from folks like IBM and Hewlett-Packard, as well as the emerging class of web services management startups (such as Amberpoint, Actional and Confluent) that can handle not only management of the underlying systems, but also these runtime interfaces that developers need to interact with," Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for web services specialist ZapThink LLC, said. July 14, 2003 - InternetNews - Computer Associates Kicks Off CA World However, another analyst was not won over by CA's revelations. ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg said it's not clear from the announcements how CA's Web Services management efforts relate to their Adaptive Management initiative. "Adaptive Management is all about helping companies to be On Demand businesses, and Service-Oriented Architectures built upon Web Services open standards should be the core architectural approach to enabling On Demand," Bloomberg explained. "IBM understands this connection, but apparently, CA does not -- their Web Services announcements imply that Web Services are solely for standards-based integration. Using Web Services for integration is an important first step, but CA must connect Web Services to Adaptive Management to have a coherent product offering." July 9, 2003 - CNet - Microsoft spec invites controversy "The last thing the industry needs are two different security/ID specifications," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with market researcher ZapThink. Bloomberg and Ron Schmeltzer [sic], also with ZapThink, said that a potential standards rivalry could be hurtful to the industry at large. "Security is the primary concern of Web services users today," said Schmeltzer. "If we see proliferation of multiple specifications backed by the big players, it could cause confusion and slow down end user adoption." July 9, 2003 - Amberpoint Press Release - British Telecommunications Plc Calls on AmberPoint for Web Services Management "BT is the latest addition to AmberPoint's list of partners and customers, showing that AmberPoint's products are gaining traction in the Web services marketplace," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst, ZapThink. "The fact that BT has chosen to implement AmberPoint solutions shows two things: first, that Web services technologies address real-world business needs now, and second, that AmberPoint's Web services management solutions meet the carrier-grade quality requirements of today's enterprises." July 9, 2003 - InternetWeek - Actional UDDI Pact Boosts Web Services Management "For a while, UDDI has been the red-headed stepchild of web services," said Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for market research firm ZapThink. "People would talk about it, but they really weren't quite clear on how it fit in." July 9, 2003 - CIO Magazine - Getting a Grip on Web Services Jason Bloomburg [sic], a senior analyst at Zapthink, a Waltham, Mass.-based Web services analyst, says that for Web services to work well, they need to be secure, available and scalable. Therefore, he says, they need to be managed well. “Some companies wait until they have a lot of Web services, but as soon as a company has Web services that are mission critical, even if it’s only one or two, they need to manage them,” Bloomburg says. “You can have all sorts of problems with just one Web service.” July 8, 2003 - IT Business Edge - 3 QUESTIONS: Web Services: A Grass-roots EAI Solution With Jason Bloomberg and Ron Schmelzer, senior analysts and partners with ZapThink, LLC, a consultancy specializing in Web services deployment and service-based architecture. Question: Are the most successful Web services projects, in terms of quick turn-around on ROI, tending to be between partners and customers, or for simplifying systems integration? Bloomberg: The primary use of Web services at this point is actually internal to the enterprise, far more so than to conduct business-to-business integration. Schmelzer: A lot of the problems that traditional EAI solutions have been trying to solve, those are the kinds of problems people are looking to solve with an architectural approach rather than using proprietary solutions to solve general integration issues. And that's a very large market, probably larger than the business-to-business integration market. July 8, 2003 - CNet Radio - Web Services - Status 2003 Part 2: The Name Game Web Services: Status 2003 Radio Show Part 2 of 5. It's alphabet soup for lunch: From XML to BPEL, a summary of the standards and bodies you need to know. Listen to ZapThink analyst Ronald Schmelzer on XML. July 8, 2003 - CNet Radio - Web Services - Status 2003 Part 5: Next Steps Web Services: Status 2003 Radio Show Part 5 of 5. We've examined the underpinnings of Web services. What must happen in the remainder of 2003 to make it all come together? Listen to ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg on Web Services security. July 8, 2003 - Network World - Growing XML use fuels accelerators What the start-ups have in common is that they are all developing hardware to accelerate XML processing. Analysts say addressing the XML factor in software won't be enough as the usage of XML increases, and hardware devices will have to handle the bulky processing. According to ZapThink, XML is expected to account for about 25% of network traffic in 2006; it accounts for less than 2% today. July 7, 2003 - Boston Business Journal (registration required) - Small analyst firms emerge amid layoffs, mergers Hurwitz's firm is the latest entry among boutique technology industry analysis firms that have cropped up in the Bay State since the technology boom's peak in the late 1990s, from Nucleus Research Inc. in Wellesley to ZapThink LLC in Waltham. Ron Schmelzer and Jason Bloomberg are senior analysts and the two principals of ZapThink LLC in Waltham, a firm formed to focus specifically on the XML programming language and web services in emerging markets. Schmelzer said his company's focus on two areas helps ZapThink stand out in a tough market, and plans call for keeping it that way. July 3, 2003 - InfoWorld - Actional, Systinet forge Web services partnership The two companies are not competitors, said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink in Waltham, Mass. "Actional is essentially focused on the Web services [management] space and Systinet is focusing on the infrastructure tools and infrastructure more than management," Bloomberg said. Users with the Systinet-Actional partnership can link Looking Glass and SOAPstation and add the UDDI offering when they are ready, Bloomberg said. "One of the key advantages to this partnership for customers is that [users] can get a Web services management solution that gets them started. They don't have to have a lot of Web services to get Web services management," Bloomberg said. July 3, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Waning EAI Market Turns to Project-Based Integration Conversely, one research firm believes service-oriented processes may some day sound the death knell for EAI. ZapThink published their results in a study this past April. "If you're thinking of it from the bottom-up as a bunch of systems that you're trying to integrate, you're going to need a bunch of expensive systems to make it happen," said ZapThink Senior Analyst Ron Schmelzer. "By approaching a Service-Oriented Architecture from a business process perspective, it will buy you all of the things people are trying to solve with integration products today." July 3, 2003 - SearchWebServices - SOAP Learning Guide Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink: "Today's Web services are often little more than software components wrapped in SOAP interfaces, and as such, today's software testing tool vendors only need to add simple XML support to their product lines in order to offer Web Services testing capabilities to their customers." July 2, 2003 - CRN - Be Nimble, But Be Safe But industry experts agree that security is a major source of angst. "Security is the primary and most immediate roadblock to Web services adoption today," says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink, a research firm focused on XML and Web services. "It's not simply because XML is text-based and sent over transparent protocols like HTTP. Common encryption technologies like SSL can solve that problem. The bigger problem is one of authentication and authorization." June 30, 2003 - Intelligent Enterprise - Making Hay: Web service managers are off to an early start Jason Bloomberg, analyst with ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass., says one way to make sense of it is to separate the players into active and passive managers. "Amberpoint and Confluent are two of the better-known active management vendors," he explains. Active management software is able to exert some control over the XML messages it monitors. Swingtide and Service Integrity are passive players. "These guys just sit there and sniff," says Bloomberg: "They listen to the XML going by and create reports and alerts." June 30, 2003 - eWeek - IBM Tests Web Services SLA Technology "SLAs and Web services management in general are an absolute necessity for companies looking to deploy reliable service-oriented architectures based on Web services," said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass. "You can't run a Web service in an environment where the service has to do something useful if you can't guarantee that it is performing. This is not even a nice-to-have, but a must-have. "If not, Web services simply can't take off in a commercial environment," Schmelzer said. June 30, 2003 - ComputerWorld - Taming data complexity "U-forms and the Semantic Web are aimed at solving different kinds of problems," says Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass. "The Semantic Web is aimed more at business-to-business communications, where Company A and Company B need a common understanding of the terminology. A purchase order, for example, has to mean the same thing to both of them. June 30, 2003 - ComputerWorld - W3C Cleans Up SOAP Standard Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass., said he thinks it will take a year or two for SOAP 1.2 to work its way into products. In the meantime, "vendors and end users are going to be annoyed at times at the fact that there are two [versions of SOAP]," he said. But he added that work is ongoing in the Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) Organization to create profiles on how to use standards such as SOAP. June 26, 2003 - InfoWorld - Web services ID management touted "SPML adds to the identity management capabilities by providing a standard way in which access to these critical infrastructure resources can be granted or denied," said analyst Ronald Schmelzer of ZapThink in Waltham, Mass. "This means that companies can build applications that have strict identity and security policies without having to do so in a proprietary and noninteroperable manner." "While SPML has more to do with provisioning physical access to specific resources, there is definitely potential for overlap or at least complementary offering to the WS-Security and WS-Policy specifications," Schmelzer said. June 25, 2003 - ComputerWorld - W3C finalizes SOAP 1.2 standard "The key message here is that SOAP has matured," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass. "There are not likely to be many additional changes to the standard." Although many vendors have committed to support SOAP 1.2, Bloomberg predicted that it will take one or two years for SOAP 1.2 to work its way into products. In the meantime, he said, "vendors and end users are going to be annoyed at times at the fact that there are two [SOAP standards] out there." June 25, 2003 - Hardware.no (Norwegian) - SOAP 1.2 som standard Både Tim Barners-Lee som driver W3C og Jason Bloomberg, en markedsanalytiker fra Zapthink, mener SOAP 1.2 er en vellykket og fremtidsrettet protokoll. June 24, 2003 - Java Pro - The Next Big Thing According to the prognosticators at ZapThink, revenue from consulting about systems interoperability will decline by 70 percent by the year 2010. For IT managers who spend millions every year making everything work together and who have to think about such things as budgets, this might come as good news. Interoperability is achieved by 2010! June 24, 2003 - BusinessWeek Online - How Amazon Opens Up and Cleans Up "It's quite likely that in the next three to five years, customers will decide the interface," says Ronald Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink, a Web-services analysis firm. June 24, 2003 - Internetnews.com - SOAP 1.2 Becomes a Standard "With all the sturm and drang over the details of some of the newer Web services specifications, it's always nice to take a moment and reflect upon the fact that yes, core Web Services standards like SOAP are maturing," said ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg, whose firm researches XML and Web services. "We are making real progress in establishing the ground rules for standards-based computing. It's time for the industry to take a brief moment to pat itself on the back, and then get back to work." Zapthink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer summed up his feeling on the ratification of SOAP 1.2. June 24, 2003 - The Daily Deal - Infravio receives $6.2M Boston market research firm Zap Think estimates that the market for Web services integration products will be about $913 million this year, but projects that to grow to at least $6.2 billion in 2006. Zap Think senior analyst Jason Bloomberg said that estimate is conservative, and that the market could easily leap to $30 billion if business customers adopt Web services as the primary method of achieving greater IT integration. "The thesis is that companies are seeing integration as the biggest problem they have," Bloomberg said. "Now, the approach is to buy additional EAI [enterprise applications integration] or B2B [business to business] products for specific functions, but that isn't feasible in the long term, when what they need to do is build architecture that automatically links applications." June 24, 2003 - BusinessWeek Online - Slowly Weaving Web Services Together ZapThink, a Waltham (Mass.) consultancy that tracks the Web-services market, estimates that spending on the technology was $1.8 billion in 2002 and should exceed $5 billion next year. Those estimates are imprecise, given the blurry definition of Web services. June 24, 2003 - Infravio Press Release - Infravio Secures $6.2 Million in Second Round of Venture Financing The analyst firm ZapThink predicts that the market for Web Services-based integration will reach $6.2 billion by 2006. June 23, 2003 - NetworkWorld - Move afoot to speed XML traffic Lamb's experience is likely to become the norm. Research firm ZapThink says XML is expected to account for more than 25% of network traffic by 2006, up from just under 2% today. And Forrester says 1 billion clients will be sending and receiving XML messages based on the Simple Object Access Protocol by 2008. June 23, 2003 - eWeek - Free Tool Kits Lure Developers "Free development kits play two important roles," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass. "They give developers the opportunity to work with some of the newer specifications. "Second, these tools help companies leverage Web services to solve integration problems cost-effectively, without having to go through software purchase processes." June 20, 2003 - CRN - Systinet Generates Some Buzz Over WASP Platform Jason Bloomberg, analyst at research firm Zapthink, said it is Systinet's OEM program through ISVs that has enabled it to "pull ahead" of competitors such as Cape Clear and The Mind Electric. "Providing the internal Web services technology for OEM partners including Cognos, Mercator and Interwoven has given Systinet a renewable revenue stream that promises to make them a survivor," Bloomberg said. June 18, 2003 - The Register and SD Times - XML shows promise, but ... Gartner predicts that the amount of XML data in corporations will grow from about 2 percent in 2000 to 60 percent by 2004. Exact numbers are hard to come by though, since, as Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for ZapThink, an XML research house, says, "XML is so persuasive that it's already everywhere. Eventually, it will even be in dishwashers." Schmelzer comments that "XML is not very efficient from a processing, network, or storage" standpoint, and that its use is growing. By 2006, he says, XML traffic alone may reach 25% of corporate network traffic. June 18, 2003 - Intranet Journal - IBM Looks to Ease XML Integration The use of XML for communications between machines, as part of Web services, is "growing like gangbusters," according to Ron Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst of ZapThink, a research firm focused on XML and Web services. "XML from the content perspective is a little bit slower," Schmelzer said, "because there are significant challenges to be overcome." June 17, 2003 - Raining Data Press Release - Raining Data Launches Packaged Support for Financial Services XML Standards "Financial Services Providers are essentially information-based businesses: their primary asset is the information they store and share," said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC. "FSPs are struggling today with finding the most agile and cost-effective means to integrate and aggregate information from a wide range of unstructured and semi-structured enterprise data sources. Today's integration solutions are either targeted at structured sources of information such as databases, or are too rigid and expensive to handle enterprise information aggregation needs. A single integration architecture or approach is not sufficient to guarantee interoperability among businesses and systems. In order to facilitate interoperability, Financial Services XML standards are needed to guarantee inter-organizational information exchange, enabling trading desk and customer care professionals to have the timely, relevant intelligence they require." June 16, 2003 - InfoWorld - Groove taps app dev In addition to satisfying the collaborative needs of the development process, deeper collaborative capabilities are needed to address the impact of Web services on development, according to Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink in Waltham, Mass. "At the enterprise level, software development involves multiple people in different organizations. This is especially true as companies move toward service-oriented architectures and abstract functionality across multiple systems," Bloomberg said. "You can't build a services-oriented architecture without collaboration." June 16, 2003 - Securities Industry News - Street Makes Forays Into Utility Computing "When you talk about utility computing or on-demand computing, these are still nebulous terms that can mean different things in different contexts," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at Waltham, Mass.-based ZapThink Llc. Wall Street firms are looking at all the possible approaches, however, because utility computing can save money and improve flexibility, he said. "The cost savings come fundamentally because when you go out and buy computers, you have to buy enough computers to handle peak demand," he said. "That's usually the most important time for your systems to work. That means that, most of the time, they're sitting mostly idle. That's money being wasted. Utility computing is a way to deal with those peak demands." June 16, 2003 - eBizQ.net - Conformative Lands $6.5M In Funding XML is rapidly becoming a standard for data exchange on the World Wide Web. ZapThink, an XML and Web services analysis company, estimates that XML will represent almost 25 percent of network traffic by 2006 compared to less than two percent last year. However, XML processing is five to 10 times more resource-intensive than text processing, and the increased usage of XML and its integration with legacy technologies require data centers to add more server bandwidth in order to maintain acceptable performance and overall quality of service, Conformative explains. June 13, 2003 - InfoWorld - IBM keeps low profile at JavaOne IBM's lack of participation in JavaOne does not signal a diminished level of participation in Java, said Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst with ZapThink. "I wouldn't say that by any means they're distancing themselves from Java, but I would say they're distancing themselves from Sun," he said. One of the reasons for this distancing, Bloomberg said, is that IBM and Sun share a different vision of Web services, which were promoted heavily in the show's sessions. "For Sun, Web services should be done in Java, and they talk about the 'one Java' world, where everybody has Java." IBM does not share the same Java-centric view of Web services, he said. June 13, 2003 - Line56 - IBM Experiments with DB2 Search Analyst Jason Bloomberg of XML-centric research organization ZapThink issues a reminder about the complexities of tagging. "What do you [do] about tons of existing content? It's expensive to go back through libraries and provide metadata. And how do you get people to tag content as they produce it?" The latter problem is an issue of classic change management, but the technical problem of tagging old content is handled, to some extent, by a number of companies (e.g. CambridgeDocs) that claim to automate the process. That said, Bloomberg points out that, "To do metatagging well, you need human input." June 11, 2003 - internetnews.com - Sun Forges New Software Amid Criticism "The quandary Sun is in is that they don't know just how open or proprietary Java should be," Bloomberg told internetnews.com. "Make it too open, and not a penny of the 'Java Inside' devices will go to Sun, but make it too proprietary, and no one will want to use it. This quandary is most apparent in Sun's approach to Web Services which the company calls 'Java Web Services.' So, which is it, Sun? Are these really Web Services -- that is, open standards-based interfaces to software written in any language running on any platform, or are they language and platform specific?" June 11, 2003 - internetnews.com - Web Services Boon for Customers, Not Investors Bloomberg said that integration is indeed becoming commoditized and eventually software will just integrate out-of-the-box. But while integration itself will become relatively easy, today's IT consultancies and systems integrators will find new opportunities if they embrace the coming change. "There's a lot of problems left to be solved," Bloomberg said. "There's going to continue to be investment opportunities in IT for a long time to come, but it's going to shift around. Investing in the old way of doing things isn't going to work." Bloomberg said that although the integration aspect will be simplified by Web services, consultancies will still have their place in an SOA world. "That complexity is still there," he said. "SOAs are going to be hard to build. They're hard to build now and they're going to continue to be hard to get right. From the consulting perspective, there's still plenty of value that a consultant can add." June 10, 2003 - CNet - Wall Street goes digital to cut down on waste "The whole trade-settlement process is bogged down in this how-do-we-describe-what-we're-doing question," says Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with research firm ZapThink. "They're all moving to XML representations of these data formats because it's the best hope for achieving consistency." June 9, 2003 - Business Wire - F5 Networks Announces DevCentral -- An Online Collaborative Resource to Support Fast-Growing iControl Adoption "F5 DevCentral offers a unique approach in building a developer community by bringing two disparate groups together -- network professionals and application developers," said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, LLC. "Never before have application developers had the power to manage devices on the network through Web services-based software applications. With iControl and DevCentral, the possibilities are virtually limitless. DevCentral offers a central place for these newly-empowered developers to learn the basics of solutions development and quickly take advantage of the benefits associated with cohesive integration between networks and applications." June 9, 2003 - eWeek - Ease of Use to Be All the Rave at JavaOne "Sun is launching a Java labeling initiative clearly modeled after Intel's successful 'Intel Inside' campaign," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, of Cambridge, Mass. "But while Intel's campaign led to end users preferring hardware with Intel chips, leading directly to revenue for Intel, such a direct connection is not apparent for Sun. Just how much of the money paid for a 'Java Inside' mobile phone will go to Sun? The answer isn't clear." June 2003 - Web Services Journal - Strategies for Achieving Real-Time Enterprise Application Integration The vision of many enterprise integration vendors is to be the standard service-oriented integration platform provider for the enterprise. In fact, it is a large opportunity for many of these vendors to extend their leadership in the integration market. A recent ZapThink survey indicates that the market opportunity will be about $6.2 billion by 2006. June 9, 2003 - TechTarget - More firms using Web services to integrate legacy apps Products from the established mainframe players "make sense if you have investments in those technologies" that you plan on keeping for the long-term, says Ron Schmeltzer, senior analyst with consultancy ZapThink LLC, in Waltham, Mass. But if you have older technology and are not looking to upgrade, it might make more sense to go with an independent software vendor for Web services help. June 5, 2003 - Silicon Valley biz ink - Raining Data Corporation to Demonstrate Mid-Tier XML Data Server For Rapid Information Aggregation at SIA 2003 Raining Data will be providing attendees of the SIA 2003 Technology Management Conference free copies of recently published research reports that detail the TigerLogic XDMS approach and its importance to strategic information management architecture in the financial services industry, including: -- "High Performance Information Aggregation Using XML-Based Operational Data Servers: Empowering Flexible Data Aggregation in the Financial Services Markets," by Ronald Schmelzer, Senior Analyst at ZapThink, LLC, May 2003, also available at http://www.rainingdata.com/zapthink/index.html June 5, 2003 - TechTarget - Services-Oriented Management (SOM) Expert(s): Services-oriented management is still a new an emerging space, and it's very difficult to see a clear market leader. There are a number of companies who appear to stand out more than others, although a general critisism is that too many vendors only provide products with management support for SOAP-based services only, and therefore these products will be unable to provide services-oriented management to the entire enterprise infrastrucure. Many analyst firms provide a breakdown of the overall market, and analyst firms such as ZapThink, The Burton Group, Forrester, Gartner, and others are all preparing new reports in this area. June 3, 2003 - internetnews.com - OASIS and RosettaNet Set Standards Alliance "The only cautionary note is that it's not clear how Web Services specs (such as SOAP, WSDL, and the UDDI as well as the security and reliability specs) fit in to the picture," ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer told internetnews.com. "It's interesting to note, in addition, that the WS-I wasn't involved in this standards convergence effort, which is their main purview as well." June 3, 2003 - ebizQ - AmberPoint Enhances Suite And Inks Pact With HP As for the AmberPoint/HP development, Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC, commented, "As organizations build service-oriented architectures based on Web services, they require a panoramic view of the IT landscape, as well as the ability to centrally control all the disparate systems and data sources that support that architecture," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC. "The integration of AmberPoint with HP OpenView will enable companies that are exposing application functionality as Web services to gain greater value from their heterogeneous systems while reducing the management burden." June 3, 2003 - DotNetGuru (French) - Qu'est-ce que l'architecture SOA ? Nul doute que SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) fait partie des néologismes techniques les plus utilisés de cette année 2003. Mais qu'est-ce que SOA au juste ? Derrière ce terme se cache des concepts aussi obscurs que complexes. Les Web Services, l'agilité, les Use Case views ou encore MDA et le MOF font partie des fondations de SOA. Cet article (en anglais) signé Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst chez LLC, nous en dit plus sur SOA. Un article d'architecte pour architecte, un brin abstrait mais ô combien important. June 3, 2003 - Amberpoint Press Release - AmberPoint Integrating Web Services Management Solutions With HP OpenView "As organizations build service-oriented architectures based on Web services, they require a panoramic view of the IT landscape, as well as the ability to centrally control all the disparate systems and data sources that support that architecture," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC. "The integration of AmberPoint with HP OpenView will enable companies that are exposing application functionality as Web services to gain greater value from their heterogeneous systems while reducing the management burden." June 2003 - SearchCIO - Word of the Day: On-demand Computing Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst with ZapThink, says that on-demand computing is a broad category that includes all the other terms, each of which means something slightly different. Utility computing, for example, is an on-demand approach that combines outsourced computing resources and infrastructure management with a usage-based payment structure (this approach is sometimes known as metered services). June 2003 - XML Journal - XML Authoring in the Financial Services Industry According to the analyst firm ZapThink: The financial services sector spent more than $195 billion on information technology in 2001, with $985 million invested in XML technologies in 2002. Expenditures on XML technologies in the financial services sector will grow to more than $8.3 billion by 2005. XML-based content management and single-source publishing can reduce the total cost of publishing by up to 75%. May / June 2003 - Application Develpoment Advisor - Security experts take safe option and agree You know when something is really fundamental and important– and not quite working yet- when no vendor wants to rock the boat. It seemed that we were in such an area at the “Web Services Security – Is It Enough?” panel chaired by Jason Bloomberg (of analysts Zapthink) at the XML & WebServices 2003 show at Olympia in March (hands up time – the show organisers are the people behind ADA, but, hey, if it’s interesting it’s interesting). The panel included security experts such as Mark O’Neil of Vordel, freelance Microsoft authors such as Andy Olsen and, for good measure, Patrick Gannon, OASIS President and CEO – and they all agreed about everything. May 30, 2003 - Integration Developer News - SOAP 1.2 Marks Start of Web Services Testing Era ZapThink, a Waltham, Mass.-based research firm, predicts the release of SOAP 1.2 will fuel the search for -- and development of -- tools and technologies that help developers (and sysadmins) ensure that the services they build are doing what they're supposed to be doing. In the study Testing Web Services, ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg predicts, "The next generation of web services promises to fundamentally change the distributed computing landscape and present new testing scenarios and problems that companies using web services don't currently understand." May 29, 2003 - SearchWebServices - Bonus Edition: Web services management, part two "If you only have test implementations, and don't have any Web services in real production environments, then you don't need to look at management tools," believes Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with the consulting group ZapThink, which specializes in Web services. "And if you have a Web service for a very specific task, like tying SAP to Siebel, then you don't need them, either." May 28, 2003 - CNet and BusinessWeek - Security firms seek common tongue The need for a better way of sharing data on security risks is becoming increasingly important, particularly as the use of Web services takes hold, said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink. Web services applications "will continuously need to be on the lookout for security vulnerabilities and interact with each other to provide a cohesive network of secured systems," said Schmelzer. May 28, 2003 - Internetnews.com - OASIS Wants to Classify Web Security ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer discussed the importance of WAS and AVDL as they apply to Web services (define), which is where software development is heading, and by extension, an area attackers could try to exploit. Schmelzer said because Web services will provide access to systems through an abstracted interface, it becomes harder for systems to get a grasp on who is making a request for application functionality and whether that person is authorized. May 28, 2003 - TechWeb / CRN - OASIS Panel Will Develop Common Language For App Security The effort by OASIS, which stands for the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, is also expected to provide consistency in describing vulnerabilities that are sure to arise as companies build and deploy applications based on emerging Web services standards, Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for high-tech researcher ZapThink LLC, said. May 27, 2003 - TechTarget - Bonus Edition: Web services management Web services have unique properties that make them particularly difficult to manage, according to Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with the consulting group ZapThink, which specializes in Web services. "They're different from other applications in that one of their advantages is that they're loosely coupled and dynamically bound, and really are only an interface between applications. So when you say you need to manage them, you're talking about managing an interface." Making management even more difficult, he says, is that if the Web service provides links to an external service, you don't have any control over that external service, and "how can you manage something over which you have no control? And how can you test it without putting it into production?" May 27, 2003 - Fierce Enterprise Newsletter - Trend: Web services to impact IT consulting According to a new report from researcher ZapThink, Web services will have considerable influence on the way IT consulting is conducted in the future. As such, consultancies will be forced to reduce their systems integration offerings and focus instead on areas such as business process improvement as more clients implement Web services technology. In other words, Web services will start doing much of today's consulting work automatically. Furthermore, according to ZapThink, consulting revenue from systems-integration projects could fall more than 70 percent by 2010, while business process consulting revenue could increase 20-fold. May 26, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Oak Grove Establishes BPM Reseller Channel "They fundamentally believe, and I think they're correct, that a lot of this business process stuff is going to be embedded," Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst for Web services research firm ZapThink told internetnews.com. May 26, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Service-Oriented Architectures Underpin On-demand Waltham, Mass-based research firm ZapThink said in a recent report that SOAs will offer the organizing principle behind the on demand computing movement, which is spearheaded by such vendors as IBM, HP, Computer Associates and Veritas. Web services are important to the adoption of service-oriented architectures because the XML standards on which they are based let companies connect data or processes to different applications. May 26, 2003 - eWeek - Web Services Get More Options Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass., said he views Swingtide as unique in its category. "Instead of rushing the first version of their software product to market, they developed an extensive professional services offering to build relationships with their customers, build awareness within their selected target industry and to gather a detailed understanding of their customers' needs," Bloomberg said. May 26, 2003 - BizTech (Japanese) - コンサルティング会社はビジネス・プロセス最適化に注力すべき 米ZapThinkは米国時間5月22日に、ITコンサルティング・サービスの展望について調査した結果を発表した。企業でWebサービスをベースにしたサービス指向のアーキテクチャが主流になるとともに、ビジネス・プロセスの最適化を目的としてコンサルティング・サービスを導入する企業が増えるという。 May 26, 2003 - 01Net (Italian) - Rischio Web service per i consulenti dell’It I Web service potrebbero rubare il lavoro ai consulenti dell'It. Questo è quanto sostiene la società di ricerche ZapThink in un recente report, secondo cui l'evolversi e il diffondersi dei servizi Web costringerà le aziende operanti nel settore dei servizi informatici a rivedere drasticamente il loro business dell'integrazione di sistemi e a concentrarsi su altre aree. May 25, 2003 - Tweakers.net - Web services zorgen voor grote impact op consulting Business Week meldt dat onderzoeksbureau ZapThink in een rapport de verwachting heeft uitgesproken dat adviesbureaus in de computerindustrie bepaalde activiteiten drastisch zullen moeten terugdringen, omdat de vraag daarnaar aanzienlijk zal dalen. Met name op het gebied van systeemintegratie, een belangrijke bron van inkomsten voor veel adviesbureaus, zal voor hen steeds minder te halen zijn. Momenteel worden consultants nog vaak ingezet om diverse systemen samen te laten werken, maar dankzij onder meer Web services zal de vraag hiernaar volgens auteur Jason Bloomberg in 2010 met 70% gedaald zijn. Bloomberg ziet nog wel een markt voor consultants, maar dan meer op het gebied van bijvoorbeeld stroomlijning van bedrijfsprocessen. May 24, 2003 - ZDNet Japan - コンサルティングを変えるWebサービス 調査会社ZapThinkの報告書によると、サービス企業は今後、企業のビジネスプロセスを改善させる業務などにシフトしていくことになる。現在のコンサルティング企業の売上の大半はSI事業によるものだが、今後サービス企業が生き残るためには、ビジネスモデルを変える必要があると報告書を執筆したJason Bloomberg氏は指摘している。 May 23, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Is F# a Major or Minor Consideration for Microsoft? ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer was less concerned about Microsoft's intentions. He noted that Microsoft is known for doing research on a variety of topics that may never see the light of day as a product, and "this might be one of them." "However, I don't think there is cause for alarm here. Microsoft was one of the original creators of XML, and things like SOAP and BPEL, so why would they dump it? By and large, this looks to be a focused research project by an individual or a small group exploring the topic of how to produce better compiled languages. I don't see any indication that this would replace C, C#, C++, Java, or any other language that Microsoft supports. In fact, the Microsoft CLR that forms the basis of the .NET runtime explicitly supports things like new languages and F# might just be one of those." May 23, 2003 - Line56 - Consultants: Know Your SOAs Service-oriented architectures (SOAs) are the wave of the future, according to onlookers like XML-centric analyst group ZapThink, and the time has come for consultants to educate themselves accordingly. So says ZapThink in its latest report, "Service-Oriented Consulting: Facilitating the Service-Oriented Enterprise." The report's big point is that there's an increasing demand for architectural consulting, attended by a ramp-up in the number of technology solutions around the vision. Consequently, ZapThink predicts that total SOA architectural and process consulting revenues will "surpass those from system integration by 2006" while system integration revenue earned by professional services organizations will fall more than 70 percent by 2010. May 23, 2003 - CNet and BusinessWeek - Report: Web services to alter consulting The rise of Web services will force computer-services companies to dramatically scale back their systems-integration businesses and focus on other tasks, according to a research note released Thursday. The note, from research firm ZapThink, says that with the appearance of more applications based on Web services--a programming method and set of standards specifically designed to link disparate systems--services companies will start shifting to tasks such as improving corporate business processes. May 23, 2003 - InfoWorld - Web services to offload integration from professional services As service-oriented architectures utilizing Web services become dominant, companies will increasingly be using professional services organizations less for system integration and more for architectural consulting and business process automation, according to a report from research firm ZapThink announced this week. May 22, 2003 - 01Net.fr (French) - Water veut inverser le courant du développement XML L'ambition de Water est de développer des applications XML - en particulier des services applicatifs distribués - en recourant à un seul langage. Une idée saluée par Jason Bloomberg, consultant au cabinet Zapthink : « Toutes les couches - données, traitement, présentation - sont écrites en XML. D'où une courbe d'apprentissage réduite. » Mais l'envol de Water est conditionné à son accueil auprès des développeurs. S'ils le plébiscitent, Water fera couler beaucoup d'encre. May 22, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Will BPEL and WSCI Come Together? "There's nothing at all surprising about Sun's changing their mind, as their software strategy has been rudderless for over a year now. When you put this week's change of direction in the context of all the zigzags Sun has been making since Web Services got off the ground, it might look like Sun is desperate -- and maybe they are," said ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg. May 22, 2003 - TechWeb - Demand For Software Integration Expected To Ease Dramatically The adoption of service-oriented architectures based on emerging web services standards will dramatically reduce the need to manually tie IT systems in order to automate business activities within an organization or between companies, ZapThink LLC said. "With web services and services-oriented architectures, integration is going to be a function of software. It's going to be integrated out of the box," ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg said. "As a result, the whole business of systems integration is going to shift, because that's not going to be something that people will need to hire consultants to do in the next seven years or so." May 22, 2003 - CNet - Microsoft plans Jupiter landing Jupiter pricing, still to be determined, could be a quagmire for Microsoft as well, noted Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at market researcher ZapThink. Although it may be convenient to purchase a suite of server products, customers may balk at paying full price if they only use a subset of the features, he said. That was one drawback to Microsoft's earlier BackOffice efforts. May 2003 - Enterprise Architect - Align Systems and Workflow With Process Integration "Service-oriented process solutions will supplant the need for today's integration solutions," predicts Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, a Web services research firm. "Service-oriented process tools enable business users to assemble business-oriented Web services into business processes that are themselves exposed as Web services." May 21, 2003 - eWeek - OASIS Ratifies UDDI 2 as Open Standard "The ratification of UDDI by OASIS is a big thing for the organization as it allows them to focus on the next and probably most significant version of UDDI," said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge-based market research company. May 20,2003 - TechTarget - What is service-oriented architecture? part two Only after that has been agreed upon should the IT department begin its work. Based on the business vision, "The architectural team has to come up with an overall architecture," says Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with the ZapThink research and analysis firm. He says that not all enterprises may have the expertise to develop this in-house, and so it may be worthwhile to look to an outside firm for help. May 20, 2003 - Internetnews.com - UDDI v2 Anointed Open Standard by OASIS ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg said without UDDI, it could be very difficult to get much benefit out of an SOA. "UDDI is particularly important because it enables Web Services to be location independent -- that is, Web Service consumers need not know ahead of time what system or network a Web Service is running on," Bloomberg told internetnews.com. "Furthermore, because UDDI registries return the WSDL files that describe the desired Web Services, the consumers of those Services can bind to them dynamically at runtime -- in other words, perform just-in-time integration." To be sure, ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer said that despite the positive spin the news has, the challenge OASIS will face is that companies are "still struggling with trying to understand how UDDI, and indeed the "discovery" aspect in general, fits into the Web Services picture." May 20, 2003 - CNet - Web services 'yellow pages' gains ground Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink, said that version 3 of UDDI could hasten the adoption of so-called services-oriented architectures, a new way of designing software applications. "As companies realize that there are significant...benefits in moving to a service-oriented architecture, they will realize that UDDI is no longer an option, but a necessity," Schmelzer said. May 20, 2003 - InformationWeek - Startups Pushing The Idea Of Web-Services Hubs "Companies will begin to accept service-oriented architectures this year, and it will become the dominant distributed computing approach in 2006," predicts Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink, an XML and Web services-research group. A class of software that barely registers on the applause meter today may prove to be a $10 billion market by 2005, he says. May 20, 2003 - TechWeb - OASIS Approves Core Web Services Standard "The ratification of UDDI (version 2) by OASIS is a big thing for the organization as it allows them to focus on the next, and probably, most significant version of UDDI," Ronald Schmelzer, analyst at high-tech researcher ZapThink LLC, said. Most companies are currently using Web services standards for point-to-point application integration, and haven't yet had to delve into UDDI, Schmelzer said. However, that's expected to change over time, if companies move to so-called service-oriented architectures, which proponents say is the next-generation design for building software that can communicate in standardized ways. May 19, 2003 - Mass High Tech - Swingtide releases industry-tailored XML line ZapThink senior analyst Jason Bloomberg, in a release, calls the software “a complete solution for discovering, visualizing and auditing XML traffic on the network. Swingtide Monitor goes one step further and understands the semantics of industry-specific XML schemas.” May 19, 2003 - eWeek - W3C Proposes SOAP standrd "I think this is a good step for the industry -- What the release of the proposed recommendation for SOAP shows is two major things: the final step in a long process towards industry consensus around Web Services specifications, and the fact that they've resolved quite a few interoperability issues," said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, of Waltham, Mass. May 19, 2003 - TechTarget - Experts see merit in Microsoft's choice of OASIS over W3C While at first glance it may have made sense for Microsoft, IBM and the others to work with the pre-existing group at the W3C, Ron Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst with Waltham, Mass.-based research firm ZapThink LLC, said the W3C's standards ratification process is lengthy and rigorous. "OASIS has a much more flexible, community-driven standards process, and a lot of the other core Web services standards are already being hosted by OASIS," Schmelzer said. Because the long-term success of the Web services movement is directly tied to rapid standards development, he said it makes sense for Microsoft to have submitted its specification to the group that could most quickly ratify it. May 19, 2003 - SwingTide Press Release - Swingtide Announces Industry-Tailored Auditing and Monitoring Software for XML Web Services "As companies increasingly rely upon XML and web services in their day-to-day business, the need to understand the nature of the XML traffic on their networks becomes a critical concern," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink, LLC. "Swingtide Monitor offers a complete solution for discovering, visualizing and auditing XML traffic on the network. Swingtide Monitor goes one step further and understands the semantics of industry-specific XML schemas, making it stand out from the competition in its focus on vertical industry needs." May 19, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Amazon.com Updates SDK with Web Services Amazon.com is a natural for early adoption of Web services and is able to expedite the rollout to its developer community moreso than an online auctioneer like eBay, (Quote, Company Info) according to Jason Bloomberg, analyst with ZapThink in Waltham, Mass. "A consumer site that is welcome to all comers is free from identity and authorization issues," said Bloomberg. He said eBay is interested in making similar use of Web services, but the online auctioneer faces additional challenges. "eBay only wants registered users, and this is where Web services are somewhat immature, namely security, metering, and billing." May 19, 2003 - eWeek - Web Services Tools Take Different Tacks Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, Cambridge, Mass., said he views Swingtide as unique in its category. "Instead of rushing the first version of their software product to market, they developed an extensive professional services offering to build relationships with their customers, build awareness within their selected target industry, and to gather a detailed understanding of their customers' needs," Bloomberg said. "Swingtide has thus been able to build a significant revenue stream in advance of launching their first software product, and that product promises to be of a higher quality than competing products that were rushed to market." May 19, 2003 - eBizQ.net - Swingtide Gets Into Swing Of XML Web Services Networks "As companies increasingly rely upon XML and web services in their day-to-day business, the need to understand the nature of the XML traffic on their networks becomes a critical concern,” said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink, LLC. “Swingtide Monitor offers a complete solution for discovering, visualizing and auditing XML traffic on the network. Swingtide Monitor goes one step further and understands the semantics of industry-specific XML schemas, making it stand out from the competition in its focus on vertical industry needs." May 18, 2003 - InfoWorld - Startups push services-oriented architectures Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at Web services research company ZapThink, inWaltham, Mass., agrees: "The quantity of XML traffic on the network is exploding. XML itself is verbose." As a result, the current generation of systems management tools is generally incapable of effectively managing XML traffic, Bloomberg said. As an example, XML traffic can be invisible to the network. Unauthorized SOAP requests or arbitrary method calls routed through port 80 can bypass firewall defenses. May 16, 2003 - Hosting Tech - RSA Security Helps Organizations Implement Secure Web Services to Achieve Competitive Advantage ZapThink predicts the web services security market to reach $4.4 billion by 2006, out of a total web services software market of more than $25 billion. As the use of XML and web services increases, the need for comprehensive security solutions becomes even more critical, said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink. Furthermore, as companies look to use web services strategically across the enterprise, they will find that enterprise-wide identity and access management coupled with robust security policy administration and enforcement are essential precursors to building enterprise-class Service-Oriented Architectures. May 16, 2003 - Computer Dealer News - At your service We might think that these vendors, who offer products to address just these challenges, are speaking purely out of self-interest, but Waltham, Mass.-based analyst firm ZapThink, which specializes in the XML and Web services market, concurs. In an article in its e-mail newsletter, ZapFlash, senior analysts Ronald Schmelzer and Jason Bloomberg stated, "(In 2002) much of the to-do about Web services was more hype than substance. The fact of the matter is, Web services adoption hit a series of roadblocks in 2002, and more are yet to come . . . IT organizations realized that they had to overcome critical security and management challenges before their Web services implementations would meet broad enterprise needs." May 16, 2003 - 01Net.fr (French) - Une autre vision du développement XML L'ambition de Water est de développer des applications XML ­ en particulier des services applicatifs distribués ­ en recourant à un seul langage. Une idée saluée par Jason Bloomberg, consultant au cabinet Zapthink : « Toutes les couches ­ données, traitement, présentation ­ sont écrites en XML D'où une courbe d'apprentissage réduite.» Mais l'envol de Water est conditionné à son accueil auprès des développeurs. S'ils le plébiscitent, Water fera couler beaucoup d'encre. May 15, 2003 - SD Times - OASIS Proposes Standard for Business Documents The problem with the UBL effort, said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC, a research firm specializing in XML and Web services, is that not only do businesses conduct few transactions across industries, there is also little overlap in the documents used across industries. “The percentage they have in common is very small,” he said. “[The standard] may be good enough to do addresses, but to do anything important in a business, you have to negotiate anyhow.” May 15, 2003 - Internetnews.com - RSA Preaches Web Services Security Further details of RSA's initiative will be addressed in a May 20 Webcast, produced with ZapThink, an XML and Web services analyst firm. Among the topics discussed will be the opportunities of web services, industry trends and best practices. ZapThink expects the Web services security market to reach $4.4 billion by 2006, out of a total Web services software market of more than $25 billion. "As the use of XML and web services increases, the need for comprehensive security solutions becomes even more critical," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink. May 2003 - Rational Edge - The role of the service-oriented architect Article by Jason Bloomberg: Web services have moved beyond the hype stage and are now a reality for many enterprises. Hundreds of companies have built Web services pilot projects, proving that this most recent evolution of distributed computing technology can reduce integration and development costs substantially. Forward-looking enterprises are now looking to take the next step and leverage the power of Web services strategically across the enterprise. May 2003 - Waters Magazine - BPM Vendors Excavate Application Frameworks "The whole area [of business process management] has traditionally been complicated-- automating connections across corporate business partners, suppliers or even between divisions of the same company," says Schmelzer. "The goal is process automation, or workflow automation, is to make sure that any multi-step transaction happens in a reliable and efficient manner and results in lower costs." May 15, 2003 - .NET Magazine - Deliver SQL Data As Web Services Technical analysts speculate that XML Web services will represent a $4.4 billion (according to ZapThink) to $7.1 billion (according to IDC) industry by 2006 (see Resources). May 14, 2003 - LogicLibrary Press Release - LogicLibrary Releases Logidex 2.0 "As companies undertake Web services projects and build out service-oriented architectures, they will find that tools that manage and map relationships among software development assets, including existing applications, are essential for maintaining the flexibility and agility of the architecture, as well as saving significant time and money," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink, LLC. "Logidex 2.0 enables enterprises to map assets directly to key business processes, which is a critical capability for an enterprise service-oriented architecture. Logidex 2.0's integration directly within IDEs is also an essential feature that all enterprise application development tools must have in a service-oriented environment." May 14, 2003 - InfoWorld - IBM CEO: On-demand strategy paying off Other companies have been quick to hop on the on-demand bandwagon, leading some analysts to flag the phrase as a marketing crutch. Research company ZapThink LLC cited it as "one of the buzziest buzzwords to come along since 'dot.com' was on everybody's lips," in a report last week. May 12, 2003 - CNet - Sun tries again with Jini Even though Jini does offer advantages in certain computing situations, Sun's approach places too much stress on the software as a Java-based technology, said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink. The company is readying a non-Java version of Jini for devices that can't download software. That project, called Jini Surrogate, is still in preliminary stages, however. A better approach would be to emphasize Jini's adaptability as a business solution that just happens to use Java, according to Schmelzer. "In the short term, Sun is trying to find a market for its product," Schmelzer said. "But they can't start with Java; they should start with the business." May 12-18, 2003 - Sun System News - LogicLibrary Releases Logidex 2.0 "As companies undertake Web Services projects and build out service-oriented architectures, they will find that tools that manage and map relationships among software development assets, including existing applications, are essential for maintaining the flexibility and agility of the architecture, as well as saving significant time and money," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink, LLC. May 9, 2003 - eWeek - W3C Proposes New SOAP Standard "I think this is a good step for the industry," said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC. "What the release of the proposed recommendation for SOAP shows is two major things: the final step in a long process towards industry consensus around Web Services specifications, and the fact that they've resolved quite a few interoperability issues. While the WS-I [Web Services Interoperability Organization] was mainly slated with resolving interoperability issues between different Web services implementations, solving these issues in the specification definition process is the best route to go—the more ambiguities that are removed from the spec early on in the process, the better it will be for companies building products for the spec, and for enterprises implementing them." May 8, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Sun, Oracle Join BPEL Effort "There's nothing at all surprising about Sun's changing their mind, as their software strategy has been rudderless for over a year now. When you put this week's change of direction in the context of all the zigzags Sun has been making since Web Services got off the ground, it might look like Sun is desperate -- and maybe they are," said ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg. May 7, 2003 - Internetnews.com - W3C Blesses, Proposes SOAP 1.2 ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg cheered the progress of SOAP 1.2. "The 1.2 version of SOAP cleans up most of the issues and ambiguities with the previous version of SOAP, and may actually be the final version of SOAP, or near to it," Bloomberg said. "Reaching the final version of a standard as fundamental as SOAP is important to insuring the interoperability promise of the standard, so it's encouraging that the W3C has made such progress. ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer agreed. May 7, 2003 - eWeek - Sun Joins OASIS' BPEL Committee Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with Cambridge, Mass., market research firm ZapThink LLC, said Sun's move "is a very good move for Sun and the industry as a whole. There seems to be consolidation around WSBPEL as the specification of choice for orchestration and choreography, and as such, it makes sense not to split efforts between different standards groups, but rather to coalesce on a single spec. Without this agreement, it will take the wrangling of the WS-I [Web Services Interoperability Organization] to sort this all out." May 7, 2003 - InformationWeek - W3C Releases Core Web Services Spec While industry giants, including Microsoft and IBM, have formed the Web Services Interoperability Organization to settle such issues among vendors, Schmelzer feels addressing them within a standards body is better. "Solving these issues in the specification definition process is the best route to go," he said. "The more ambiguities that are removed from the spec early on in the process, the better it will be for companies building products for the spec, and for enterprises implementing them." May 6, 2003 - TechWeb and InternetWeek - Borland Aims Dev Tools At Enterprise .Net, Java 2 App Development "This is a great move for Borland and is further proof that they are in fact the Switzerland of Web services, providing tools and solutions to meet the needs of both J2EE and .Net developers," Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for high-tech researchers ZapThink LLC, said. "No enterprise wants to feel locked into a solution, and Borland is clearly playing into this desire for vendor neutrality." May 6, 2003 - InternetWeek - HP, AmberPoint To Deliver Web Services Management Wares "The larger vendors are moving on their roadmaps, but it's going to take them a good year to two years to put in place a lot of these capabilities that truly enable companies to have enterprise-class, service-oriented architectures," said Jason Bloomberg, analyst for market researcher ZapThink LLC. May 6, 2003 - NetworkWorld - AmberPoint shines light on Web application performance “There are a number of products that let users monitor service-level agreements,” says Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink. “But what fewer products do is provide control of software that drives those agreements. AmberPoint has the alerting system as well as the control.” Bloomberg says the challenge that AmberPoint and other start-ups face is the small window of opportunity they have before major vendors such as BMC Software, CA, HP and Tivoli enter the market. May 6, 2003 - TechTarget - What is service-oriented architecture? part one Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst with the ZapThink research and analysis firm, adds that to date, most Web services are being used primarily "to solve point-to-point integration problems." But these solutions "can't solve the larger integration problems in converting hundreds of systems" to an overall, single enterprise architecture. For that, SOA is needed. May 5, 2003 - Network Magazine - 2003 Products Of The Year "The Sentry 1500 was the only XML appliance in 2002 that was functionally complete," says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink (www.zapthink.com), a consultancy specializing in XML and Web services. "They did a really great job handling network security." ZapThink consults for many XML appliance companies, including Forum Systems. May 2, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Startup Writes Language to Replace Java, .NET ZapThink.com [sic] Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg said Clear Methods' approach is an interesting one, albeit a challenge in a market where so many niche players are trying to develop Web services products that aim to complement or compete with software one of the giant vendors, such as Microsoft or IBM, don't have. "Programmers can do object-oriented programming, middle tier programming, and presentation-layer programming, all with the same language, and it's all XML," Bloomberg said. "They have a solid approach to security and as you would expect, Web Services are a no-brainer." ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer agreed there are ways in which large companies can't take advantage of XML as small companies can, "and I think that's the story here. But that's the typical story for startups -- there's always opportunity to do things in a way that large vendors can't due to their size and flexibility." May 2003 - Dell Magazine - Business be nimble, business be quick The standardized communication of Web services, on the other hand, helps businesses accomplish integration with faster development, increased reliability, and huge cost savings. “It’s a story the IT manager loves to hear,” says Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, a market research firm specializing in XML and Web services. Faster, more cost-effective development means your IT department can better respond to business needs. “The business can now drive the technology instead of vice versa,” Bloomberg says. April 30, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Corel Unwraps Smart Graphics Studio Some analysts, such as ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer, see the value in Corel's Smart Graphics Studio as a unique approach in a sea of Web services strategies geared to link applications together. Schmelzer told internetnews.com the product combines the descriptive power of XML with the publishing and presentation capabilities of Corel's flagship product line. "In essence, by adding SVG to the mix, Corel is focusing on an underserved market: companies and individuals looking to value-add their semi-structured content and structured information by providing potent visualization capabilities on top of their data. Operating somewhere between business intelligence and data aggregation, the Smart Graphics product is filling a void that is unmet by existing vendors," he said. April 30, 2003 - eWeek - SCO Web Services Strategy Targets SMBs Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass.-based market research firm, said the interesting part about SCO's announcement "is that it is solidly aimed at the mid-market—a space that has been slow to adopt Web services, when compared to the enterprise segment." One of the reasons for this is that integration at the mid-market level is external—with suppliers, partners and customers—rather than internal, so security concerns have hindered mid-market adoption of Web services, he said. Bloomberg's ZapThink partner, Ronald Schmelzer agreed, but said a market used to external integration and mostly homogeneous systems sets up Microsoft as to claim the spoils. "However, Linux is increasingly gaining traction in the SMB markets, and it is clear that SCO realizes that there is a market opportunity here," Schmelzer said. April 30, 2003 - TechTarget - Web services in capital markets: The real story XML, the founding technology behind Web services, has been enthusiastically welcomed by the financial services sector. According to ZapThink -- an XML-focused industry analyst group, the pressures of integrating complex, disparate systems, Straight-Through processing (STP) and T+1 settlement are making XML adoption a reality. The Group predicts that expenditures on XML technologies by the financial services sector will grow to $8.3 billion by 2005 from $985 million in 2002. April 30, 2003 - Content Management Focus - Industry focus: financial services In such a competitive landscape a key differentiator for finance companies is the way that they manage and understand their own intellectual capital. For example, conducting investment or equity research can be a time-consuming activity. “The likelihood is that a large percentage of the information researchers need is already held within the company,” says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. “How you re-use and re-purpose content can have a significant value-add if all you have to change is a small percentage of a report rather than rewrite the whole thing.” April 30, 2003 - Application Development Trends - Briefing Book: What is SOA? As described by ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg in Application Development Trends, SOA implements a top-down approach to planning. Model Driven Architecture (MDA), which isolates implementation from design, and Agile Modeling (AM), which employs business use cases, can both apply in part to SOA, says Bloomberg. April 29, 2003 - eWeek - OASIS Forms Committee to Promote BPEL Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market research firm, said: "The submission of BPEL to OASIS is a great step for BPEL as well as Web Services in general. BPEL is a key specification aimed at providing a mechanism by which Web Services can be orchestrated into business processes, which can then be exchanged and choreographed with external processes. Business process is a critical aspect of adoption of Web Services and especially Service-Oriented Architectures since business processes are how companies define their business requirements that must then be implemented with Web Services. Without process, all you have is a jumble of Web Services. Specifications like BPEL bring order to the chaos by specifying a logical flow by which Web Services can be orchestrated to meet defined business requirements." April 28, 2003 - NetworkWorld - Key Web services protocol gets help "People are still trying to learn how to use Web services correctly," says Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with research firm ZapThink. "Replacing proprietary interfaces with standard Web services interfaces in point-to-point connections is not that interesting. You have to change your environment to a service-oriented architecture, and to do that you need UDDI as a discovery component. Version 3 is the first workable version to support that role." April 28, 2003 - Tarari Web Release - Tarari Unveils Industry's First XML Content Processor; XML and Web Services Computing Powered by Tarari Redefines Secure Wire-Speed Content Processing As clearly outlined by ZapThink, a Massachusetts-based research firm focused on XML and Web Services, "For vendors building XML proxy solutions, OEMs and ISVs looking to improve the performance of their offerings, and end-users looking to optimize XML-aware network processing, Tarari can help provide a solution that allows users to realize the benefits of processing XML and Web Services without having to sacrifice the network performance they require." April 24, 2003 - ComputerWorld - The Web's next leap "The Semantic Web is very much a future-looking vision," says Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink in the US. "Trying to get computer systems to not only be able to communicate with each other, but also able to understand each other is traditionally a very difficult problem." April 23, 2003 - Application Development Trends - Horseless Web services Web services and Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs) are in the "horseless carriage phase" of technology utilization, according to Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst, ZapThink, LLC, the Waltham, Mass.-based XML analyst group. "The traditional mindset that needs changing is the view that Web Services are an extension of the component object model," Schmelzer said in the report. "To many developers, Web Services are simply 'another interface to a compiled object.' As a result, they apply their traditional component object design methods, deployment technologies, scalability and reliability approaches, and even terminology. The result: point-to-point implementations of Web Services that are every bit as brittle, tightly coupled, synchronous, and fine-grained as their object-oriented predecessors." April 23, 2003 - LogicLibrary Press Release - ZapThink Identifies Logidex as a Critical Tool for Building Service-Oriented Architectures "Hundreds of companies are embracing Web services projects, squeezing value out of every software asset to reduce development costs significantly," said Jason Bloomberg, ZapThink Analyst and author of the report. "Forward-looking enterprises are working to broadly leverage these initiatives and tools like Logidex are essential for creating and keeping SOA models current and complete." April 22, 2003 - Integration Development News - Next Wave of Tools, IDEs To Support 'Process Development' Developers will soon see a new wave of web services tools and IDE extensions to support process-driven services, according to ZapThink's latest report, "Service-Oriented Process." For purposes of the report, ZapThink, a web services research firm in Waltham, Mass., defines SOP as the orchestration, choreography, composition, workflow, transactions, and collaboration of web services. While this SOP tools transformation won't happen overnight, once it starts, predicts Ronald Schmeltzer, ZapThink senior analyst and author of the report, the entire web services tool niche will explode to become an $8 billion market -- 70 times its current size of just about $120 million. April 22, 2003 - AmberPoint Press Release - AmberPoint Ships First Microsoft .NET-Certified Web Services Management Solution - .NET-Connected Web services management is a key enabler of enterprise-class Web services deployments, said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst at ZapThink LLC. April 22, 2003 - InternetWeek - XML Work Poses One Of Few Viable Threats To MS Desktop Dominance However, other analysts disagree, saying it's unlikely companies would turn their backs on Microsoft Office, which some expect to remain far ahead of any challengers. "It's not really about standards. It's about product," Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for ZapThink LLC, said. "It's not a matter of interoperability between different office applications, but how you build a good product." April 22, 2003 - VAR Business - VAR Opportunities In Web Services "Designing a services-oriented architecture or framework is mandatory for [Web services] to work," says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, a research firm devoted to XML and Web services. "This is exactly where an enterprise or midmarket firm will need assistance from an integrator." April 22, 2003 - TechRepublic - The next generation of document management systems Analysts have predicted that these solutions will grow by over 40 percent through 2006 (IDC) and that by 2008 the market for these solutions will exceed $11 billon (ZapThink). Whether you believe the growth and market size estimates, you have to recognize that the move from proprietary file formats and limited DM systems to file formats based on XML standards and full-featured CLM systems is inevitable. April 21, 2003 - eBizQ.net - AmberPoint In .NET First "Web services management is a key enabler of enterprise-class Web services deployments," said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst at ZapThink LLC. "Because Web services enable interoperability among heterogeneous environments, it is essential for any Web services management solution to be optimized for both the Microsoft and J2EE platforms. AmberPoint's work with Microsoft is a big step forward for enterprise deployments of Web services, because operating natively on the .NET Framework brings performance advantages, new capabilities and tighter integration." April 21, 2003 - eWeek - ISEs Give Developers a Helping Hand "WebPutty's key strength is that they offer the tools to provide a level of abstraction above each of the tiers in an n-tier architecture," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market research firm. "In other words, a WebPutty developer is working on the presentation tier, middle tier and data tier all at once, in the same tool, without having to jump back and forth. The WebPutty Application Platform handles all the plumbing issues behind the scenes—maintaining consistency, preserving scalability, etc. Furthermore, WebPutty does it all with XML metadata—which means that the entire service-oriented architecture can be moved from one set of servers and applications to another without any recoding." April 21, 2003 - Puget Sound Business Journal - A contract with the U.S. Navy propels Ingeniux Corp. If current trends are any indication, XML-based content will continue to be a driving force for the Internet, said Ronald Schmelzer, a senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, a research and analysis firm in Massachusetts that focuses on XML and Web services. "Integration now is expensive and difficult," he said. "XML is all about integration. It's all about being able to publish easily to a variety of formats." The market for XML content is expected to grow from $1.8 billion this year to more than $11.6 billion by 2008, Schmelzer said. By 2008, roughly 60 percent of all Internet content will be XML-enabled, he said. April 18, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Business Process Spec Handed Off to OASIS, Not W3C What's happened now, according to ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer, is that the competition has moved from the companies to the W3C and OASIS. "Now it's no longer about Sun vs. Microsoft... it's about the W3C vs. OASIS, at least with respect to the orchestration and choreography standards. It's okay for vendors to compete -- they do it all the time, and having "camps" of vendors is actually to be expected nowadays," Schmelzer told internetnews.com. "However, it is not at all okay for standards organizations to compete and to have "camps" of standards organizations. It's detrimental to the industry and of course adoption of Web Services. So, what is needed is some sort of agreement about what various groups will handle. If not, we'll continue to find vendors working one standards org against another to no one's real benefit." April 18, 2003 - CNET News Radio - April 18, Friday Morning Report Audio-only Radio Broadcast by CNET. Topic: Service-Oriented Process. April 18, 2003 - 01Net.it (Italian) - Guai in vista per i tool di integrazione Un nuovo rapporto pubblicato dalla società di analisi ZapThink sostiene che la possibile nascita di un mercato di servizi Web focalizzati sulle nuove tecnologie per il business process, rischia di far diventare obsoleti gli attuali prodotti per l'integrazione delle applicazioni. Secondo lo studio, il valore dei tool di processo erogati come servizio è destinato a esplodere nei prossimi cinque anni, raggiungendo gli 8,3 miliardi di dollari contro gli attuali 20 milioni. April 17, 2003 - Line56 - Web Services Security Developments Analyst Ron Schmelzer of ZapThink takes a slightly different tack. While agreeing that security groups have their work cut out for them, he emphasizes some other issues getting in the way of Web services adoption. "What's holding Web services back is the need to have an enterprise identity and policy management system," he says. "You need to tell SAP that something else -- the application server, the service -- will make decisions about who gets access to what." Schmelzer thinks that VeriSign's announcement directly addresses this obstacle. "You needn't have an enterprise policy management system, because VeriSign will host it for you." April 17, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Service-Oriented Process to Cannibalize Integrators As Web services support for business processes matures, companies may be able to throw out expensive and complicated integration systems through a "Service-Oriented Process" approach, according to a new report by XML research firm ZapThink. "A process is a set of activities that are linked together into a logical flow that meets business requirements," Ronald Schmelzer, ZapThink co-founder and senior analyst, told internetnews.com. April 17, 2003 - CNet - Report: Trouble for integration tools A new report suggests that an emerging Web services market focused on new business-process technologies could make the current market for application-integration software obsolete. The report, released this week by Waltham, Mass.-based analyst group ZapThink, forecasts that the market for service-oriented process tools--products that use a predefined business-process workflow to connect dissimilar systems--will explode to $8.3 billion five years from now, from about $120 million annually today. April 17, 2003 - eBizQ.net - WebPutty Molds Tool For .NET Web-Enabled Apps "The WebPutty Application Platform stands out as one of the most comprehensive tools for enabling developers build service-oriented architectures (SOA) on top of existing architectures on the market today," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. "WebPutty has thought through the capabilities needed to build SOAs, and incorporated these abilities into a set of tools that can help developers both understand service orientation and build working SOAs quickly and efficiently." April 16, 2003 - TechWeb - IBM, Microsoft, BEA Snub W3C, Submit Web Services Spec To Oasis "This is a very good step for everyone," Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for high-tech researcher ZapThink LLC, said. "Now that BPEL has gone to OASIS, people are going to flock to it." "The message is really starting to jell," Schmelzer said. "Oasis and the WS-I are going to become two of the most influential organizations in setting Web services standards." April 16, 2003 - TechWeb - Web Services Adoption Expected To Supplant Today's Integration Tools The adoption of Web services in developing next-generation service-oriented computing architectures will supplant the need for today's integration software. That's according to ZapThink LLC, an analyst firm focused on emerging standards that fall under the umbrella term Web services. Web services standards will eventually make it possible to automate business processes through system-to-system integration between companies, the analyst firm said. In addition, those processes will be exposed as Web services that can be connected to other systems. April 16, 2003 - eWeek - Tools Test Web Service Interoperability "WS-I's testing tools are a critical part of their promised offerings because the testing tools make the WS-I's work concrete," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market research firm. "Up to this point their output has been the interoperability profiles, usage scenarios and guidelines, but with the testing tools, companies now have a way to show interoperability. In other words, with the testing tools, the WS-I is putting their money where their mouth is." April 16, 2003 - E-Business Standards Today - Service-oriented process solutions market to exceed $US 8 billion by 2008 A new report from XML research company ZapThink LLC predicts a growing market for what it calls service-oriented process solutions over the next few years. The report concludes that service-oriented process tools enable business users to assemble business-oriented Web services into business processes that are themselves exposed as Web services. The market for these solutions will grow from $120 million in 2003 to over $8.3 billion by 2008. April 16, 2003 - eWeek - New Spec Surfaces for Orchestrating Web Services "The submission of BPEL to OASIS is a great step for BPEL as well as Web services in general," said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market research firm. "BPEL is a key specification aimed at providing a mechanism by which Web services can be orchestrated into business processes, which can then be exchanged and choreographed with external processes. Business process is a critical aspect of adoption of Web services and especially service-oriented architectures since business processes are how companies define their business requirements that must then be implemented with Web services. Without process, all you have is a jumble of Web services. Specifications like BPEL bring order to the chaos by specifying a logical flow by which Web services can be orchestrated to meet defined business requirements." April 15, 2003 - InfoWorld (and PCWorld) - WS Security tops RSA show agenda The news reflects the need for automated and interoperable security products to navigate through critical areas such as XML signature and XML decryption/encryption practices, said Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at Boston-based ZapThink. "An important central theme [at the RSA Conference] is that WS Security is reaching its tipping point and becoming broadly implemented in a variety of products," Bloomberg said. April 15, 2003 - CNet - Web services standards facing a split? "BPEL is gaining traction right now," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at research firm ZapThink. "The bottom line is that the W3C is out of their league on this." April 15, 2003 - SD Times - Services-Oriented Architectures The real advantage, actually, is the ability to assemble and reassemble the services quickly. And the benefit this advantage confers is agility. Not the agility of agile software development, but true business agility, which is elegantly defined by Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, a Waltham, Mass.-based consultancy, as “the ability of a company to respond quickly and efficiently to change and to leverage change for competitive advantage.” (Although there are other definitions of SOA, this one seems to be the most inclusive.) April 14, 2003 - WebPutty Press Release - WebPutty Announces General Availability of the WebPutty Application Platform 7.0 “The WebPutty Application Platform stands out as one of the most comprehensive tools for enabling developers build service-oriented architectures (SOA) on top of existing architectures on the market today,” said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, LLC. “WebPutty has thought through the capabilities needed to build SOAs, and incorporated these abilities into a set of tools that can help developers both understand service orientation and build working SOAs quickly and efficiently.” April 14, 2003 - TechWeb - OASIS Takes Up Interoperability Spec For Security Apps For enterprises, AVDL would give the option of mixing software from several vendors, instead of buying a product suite from one company, Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for high-tech researcher ZapThink LLC, said. "For the people actually buying these tools, the benefits they're going to see is that they're going to have increased choice among vendors," he said. April 14, 2003 - Security Industries News - FISD Seeks ISO 15022 Links Amid MDDL Upgrades (Content only available to subscribers) April 14, 2003 - Confluent Press Release - Confluent Software Teams With VeriSign to Help Customers Deploy Secure Web Services "Some of the greatest challenges to enterprises who are trying to adopt service oriented architectures have been the security risks inherent in implementing XML and Web services across disparate legacy and non-legacy systems," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst, Zapthink LLC. "VeriSign is one of the most trusted names in enterprise security, and together with Confluent Software''s comprehensive Web services management capabilities, these two companies are well-positioned to address these risks and deliver a complete solution for deploying and managing trusted Web services." April 2003 - @Association News - ECnow.com's Top Ten 2003 Business Trends ""Enterprise architecture committees/teams inside large companies will recommend that their organizations move toward loosely coupled Service-oriented architectures. Many companies will have "ROI battles," as people who understand the substantial long-term cost benefits of service oriented architectures (SOAs) battle the bean counters, who will still be focused on short-term cost savings." April 10, 2003 - Internetnews - Microsoft Bares CE Source to OEMs "Microsoft is definitely making a push to "open" their technologies," said Ronald Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst of research firm ZapThink. "It's not clear how far this will go, but there are indications that various different market sectors are demanding that Microsoft open up their technologies so that buyers won't feel locked in to the Microsoft solution. In particular, the US government is one of those forces demanding those changes -- and not from a Department of Justice perspective, but rather as a customer of Microsoft's." April 9, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Microsoft Unifies Stack Behind Web Services "Microsoft is really moving toward unifying their applications onto a single stack," said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst and founder of XML research firm ZapThink. "With Windows Server 2003, they've really made it a platform for the deployment of enterprise-class Web services." He added, "What they are going to be pushing is simplicity through a unified, coherent commercial stack rather than an open stack. The alternative is a jumble of products that may or may not interoperate." April 9, 2003 - eAI Journal - Westbridge Introduces XML Firewall Appliance "XML and Web services create significant security challenges that existing network firewalls are unable to address," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC. "Hardware XML security appliances provide easily installable and manageable solutions for organizations who wish to drop a fully configured and tested solution into their XML network. In other cases, the flexibility of an all-software solution is more appropriate. Westbridge Technology is one of the few XML and Web services security vendors who offers both software and hardware solutions, meeting a broad range of customer needs." April 8, 2003 - Australian IT - Security taskforce for web services Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst at high-tech research and analysis firm ZapThink, says while the basic profile was important -- if only to prove that the WS-I was capable of releasing a profile that met their overall charter objectives -- it is the security profile that really starts to get to the heart of interoperability issues. "Basically, there can be no web services interoperability if the different end points make different assumptions about how security will be handled," he says. "While there are certainly enough web services security standards, it is up to the end user to figure out how to piece these standards together in a way that provides real security." April 8, 2003 - TechWeb - W3C Work On Semantic Web Sparks Debate "If I can make sure that all of my trading partners and all of my systems in my divisions are speaking the same language, that that will solve 90 percent of my problems," Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for ZapThink LLC, said. "People are not at the point where they need to talk to arbitrary systems that they don't know the semantics for." April 8, 2003 - ExtremeTech - Because Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) typically runs on top of HTTP and therefore inherits any bugs and security holes in HTTP implementations, new extensions will be used to add security enhancements. These extensions will provide a standard way t Because Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) typically runs on top of HTTP and therefore inherits any bugs and security holes in HTTP implementations, new extensions will be used to add security enhancements. These extensions will provide a standard way to ensure integrity, nonrepudiation, access control and identity approval. Market research firm ZapThink estimates the market for XML and Web Services security is expected to grow from $40 million in 2001 to $4.4 Billion by 2006. April 7, 2003 - Ektron Press Release - Ektron CMS300, an `Enterprise Web Content Management' Solution, Features New XML and Web Services Functionality The market for XML content lifecycle solutions will grow from $1.8 billion in 2003 to over $11.6 billion by 2008, according to a January 2003 report from leading XML analyst firm, Zapthink. "With so much time, cost and effort invested in content, it makes sense to reduce costs by reusing content as much as possible," says Zapthink's Ronald Schmelzer. "By re-architecting content representation technologies to treat content as another asset in the corporate IT infrastructure, businesses can realize the benefits long promised by reusable and agile content. XML and Web Services are key to a transition that can help organizations maximize the value of content." April 4, 2003 - 01Net.fr (French) - XML prouve son efficacité dans trois projets stratégiques Bien que difficilement quantifiable, le retour sur investissement (ROI) des projets de gestion de contenu basés sur XML est indéniable, selon une enquête réalisée par le cabinet d'analyses américain Zapthink en janvier dernier. En favorisant la réutilisation du contenu, XML réduit, en effet, les coûts des processus de manipulation de l'information. Notamment en autorisant la création d'infrastructures qui automatisent le partage avec des sociétés partenaires, ou encore la publication sur différents périphériques, pour différents profils d'utilisateurs, etc. April 3, 2003 - Application Development Trends - Appliance promises XML security Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Waltham, Mass.-based consulting firm, said hardware-based security systems could significantly boost Web services security. Bloomberg said that to date, existing network firewalls have had difficulties in successfully overcoming the "significant security challenges" posed by XML and Web services technologies. Hardware-based security appliances coupled with the firewalls could significantly improve security, Bloomberg said. April 3, 2003 - Network Computing - Be Nimble, But Be Safe Sounds great. But industry experts agree that security is a major source of angst. "Security is the primary and most immediate roadblock to Web services adoption today," says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink, a research firm focused on XML and Web services. "It's not simply because XML is text-based and sent over transparent protocols like HTTP. Common encryption technologies like SSL can solve that problem. The bigger problem is one of authentication and authorization." April 2, 2003 - Westbridge Press Release - Westbridge Technology Introduces XML Firewall Appliance for Web Services Security and Monitoring "XML and Web Services create significant security challenges that existing network firewalls are unable to address," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC. "Hardware XML security appliances provide easily installable and manageable solutions for organizations who wish to drop a fully configured and tested solution into their XML network. In other cases, the flexibility of an all-software solution is more appropriate. Westbridge Technology is one of the few XML and Web Services security vendors who offers both software and hardware solutions, meeting a broad range of customer needs." April 2, 2003 - Application Development Trends - OMG task force OKs UML 2.0 Look for UML 2.0 and the related technologies to be incorporated into leading modeling tools, including those from Microsoft, Borland and IBM's recently acquired Rational, said Jason Bloomberg, analyst at ZapThink LLC (http://www.zapthink.com), Waltham, Mass. He said UML is a key part of a spreading trend in development organizations to utilize the so-called Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). April 2, 2003 - Advisor Zone - Security Risk in Office 2003 XML Docs? XML definitely increases the security and performance risk for applications like Office," says Ronald Schmelzer, president of ZapThink, a research firm specializing in XML and Web services. "This relates to all XML-based applications because, fundamentally, XML is a plain-text, metadata-encoded, non-secured format. In addition, XML adds significant processor overhead that can cause unwanted side effects, like malformed XML documents consuming an inordinate amount of processor time, causing applications to crash as a result." April 1, 2003 - Internetnews - WS-I Forges Web Services Security Group ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg calls WS-I an arbiter of "real-world" Web services interoperability; the group consists of more than 170 member companies, with such giants as Microsoft, IBM and, as of last week, Sun as integral members. "The work of this committee is on the critical path for many enterprises looking to move toward Service-oriented architectures," Bloomberg told internetnews.com. ZapThink's Schmelzer said the fact that a representative from Sun is chairing the group underscores the progress the WS-I made in working harmoniously toward the same end. Sun was not always considered for board member status. April 1, 2003 - CRN - Wait-And-See Advised On Security Initiative By Web Services Group "The WS-I has their work cut out for them," Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for high-tech researcher ZapThink LLC, said. "It's not impossible. However, security is a significant problem. "If they can solve it well, it bodes well for the future of the WS-I. But if they can't solve it well, then it will definitely cause them problems. If they can't solve the security challenges, then how are they going to solve even more complicated interoperabilities, like management and business processes?" April 1, 2003 - SD Times - At Your Services To help answer some of the questions, research firm ZapThink in late February released “Ten Emerging Best Practices for Building SOAs.” Analyst Jason Bloomberg acknowledged in the paper’s introduction that best practices come from hard experience; as SOAs are so new, there is little hard experience to learn from, so he drew from a broader range of experiences in creating the list. April 1, 2003 - Application Development Trends - Managing Web services The dilemma, according to Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC, a Waltham, Mass.-based analyst firm specializing in XML and Web services, is that all the problems occur outside of the applications from which they were spawned. "My system may be working and so is yours, but the service still might not work," he said. Such headaches may sound familiar to veterans of electronic data interchange (EDI) systems, which required intricate handshakes arranged in advance. But with Web services, the trick is that all handshakes are supposed to occur on the fly. March 31, 2003 - F5 Press Release - F5 Networks Unveils the Most Comprehensive Management Solution for Local and Global IP Network Traffic Devices "Most datacenter IT organizations are overloaded by the proliferation of network devices and objects in the enterprise today," said Ron Schmelzer, Senior Analyst at ZapThink, LLC. "Enterprises are constantly striving to reduce the workload of their IT staff by increasing efficiencies, reducing the complexity of working with network devices and objects, and keeping the network configuration secure. F5 helps to meet these goals by providing a flexible, configurable, secure, and distributed management software based on iControl that provides significant administrative benefits over alternate management technologies such as SNMP." March 31, 2003 - eWeek - Sun ONE Web Services Aim to Ease Java Development "They've figured out that Web services is indeed strategic for them, but they have no idea how to capitalize on that," said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market research company. March 28, 2003 - 01Net.Fr (French) - Actional devance la standardisation de l'administration des services web Parmi elles, Actional représente la jeune pousse la plus emblématique. Elle est la seule à disposer d'une offre complète, estime Zapthink, un cabinet spécialisé dans XML et les services web. March 27, 2003 - Wakesoft Newsletter - Services Everywhere – Business vs. Technology Services While I was thinking about this topic, I read an article in Application Development Trends by Jason Bloomberg, titled "Principles of SOA" (where SOA is service-oriented architecture). The services that comprise the SOA that Bloomberg describes are business services. In the article he introduces an SOA Meta-Model and a five-view approach to SOA, which are helpful to distinguish business services and technology services. March 26, 2003 - Internetnews - Sun, webMethods Join WS-I Board Sun is definitely the Web Services underdog in the market today," ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg told internetnews.com. "They have struggled for over a year to get their Web Services strategy (as well as their overall software strategy) on track, and there are indications with the new SunONE approach that they are moving in the right direction. With their election to the WS-I, there's a good chance some of the political wrangling surrounding Web Services specs will calm down and vendors will finally get down to business." "WebMethods, on the other hand, is somewhat of a different story. The value proposition for the entire EAI space has been turned on its head by Web services, and even though webMethods claims to have been doing Web services for seven years, it's still an open question as to whether they can drive toward a successful strategy moving forward as companies begin to adopt Service-oriented architectures. It's also still not clear what their position is regarding their potential intellectual property claims on SOAP 1.2. Hopefully, their election to the WS-I board will help them move forward to more important issues." March 26, 2003 - TechTarget - WebMethods joins Sun on WS-I board Ronald Schmelzer, a senior analyst with Waltham, Mass.-based research firm ZapThink LLC, said the election results are hardly a surprise for Sun, but now the company needs to learn how to work with its fellow board members. "It's going to be imperative that they realize that they're playing in a world where they can't just be the one player vetoing everything," Schmelzer said. "They need to be part of the solutions rather than part of the problems." March 26, 2003 - InformationWeek - Sun Finally Wins Spot On Board Of Web-Services Group "With their election to the WS-I [board], there's a good chance some of the political wrangling surrounding Web-services specs will calm down and vendors will finally get down to business," says Jason Bloomberg, an analyst for ZapThink, a research firm that focuses on Web services and related technologies. March 25, 2003 - CNet - Microsoft breaks with standards effort "By being involved in the standards process, companies can craft the process for how people will adopt technology," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink. "It's not just control, but they also have their finger on the pulse of development. A lot of this feels like a land-rush mentality." March 25, 2003 - eWeek - WS-I to Announce Election Results Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market research firm, said: "It would be ironic if Sun did not get in because Sun is the reason they are having this election in the first place." March 24, 2003 - Federal Computer World - Taming Web services Although it appears that both camps have a role to play, some market watchers believe the traditional management vendors will eventually hold sway. Analysts at ZapThink LLC, a Waltham, Mass., market research firm, contend that the start-up management vendors have a two-year window before larger, more established vendors dominate the market. March 24, 2003 - Internetnews.com - All Aboard for Commerce One's Conductor ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg, who spoke with Commerce One recently, said he got the idea Commerce One is betting the company on Conductor. "The company has been through too many ups and downs and has been in the red for too long," Bloomberg told internetnews.com. "That being said, Conductor looks like a strong, comprehensive offering in the Service Orientation space. Commmerce One's strengths in the CPG, retail, automotive, and discrete manufacturing verticals gives them a great niche to build out their offering, as many other vendors are focusing on financial services, government, and healthcare." ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer said Commerce One is entering new ground, one fraught with heavy competition. March 24, 2003 - eWeek - Open-Source Growing Pains Give Sun Aches Ronald Schmelzer, president of ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass.-based market research firm, said, "Maybe Sun has a point here—that JBoss can't have both ends of the stick. However, the problem is that it shows that Java as an open technology is really extending beyond the reach of Sun. They will have to find some way to reign in the forces that conspire to pull it apart. Either it will have to be a third-party organization with teeth, or it will have to be Sun—at the expense of openness." March 24, 2003 - NetworkWorld - Management vendors focus on Web services By the middle of next year, traditional large-system management vendors will begin to dominate the Web Services management market, while point-to-point product vendors will hit their peak in 2005, according to research firm ZapThink. March 21, 2003 - CRN - Blue Titan Vies For Niche In Web Services Management Blue Titan is far from the only ISV trying to tackle Web services management ahead of the demand for the technology. Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with Waltham, Mass.-based research firm ZapThink, estimates there are at least 10 startups focused on some aspect of Web services management. March 20, 2003 - UML China (Chinese) - 面向服务架构（SOA）的原则 Web service已经不再是新婚的娘子。众多企业都已经创建各种实验性Web Services 项目，事实证明，这项新兴的分布式计算技术确实能够降低集成和开发的成本。另外，一些关键的Web Services标准纷纷制定，强安全（robust security）和管理方面的产品也陆续问世。对于志向远大的企业来说，他们已经在考虑下一步了。 March 19, 2003 - TechWeb - Sun Unveils Web Services Platform ZapThink, a research firm focusing on XML and Web services, expects 69 percent of the total enterprise software market to be service-oriented by 2010. At that time, the overall market for products and services that support the next-generation IT architecture will be more than $98 billion, ZapThink says. March 19, 2003 - 01 Informatique (French) - Des accélérateurs matériels pour mieux gérer les flux XML Datapower et Sarvega misent sur des systèmes dédiés pour épauler les serveurs qui doivent traiter les documents XML. Une solution économique qui devrait séduire bon nombre d'entreprises. L'engouement pour XML pourrait à terme engorger le réseau des entreprises. Ainsi, le cabinet d'analyses Zapthink, spécialisé dans XML et les services web, estime que, d'ici à 2006, le quart du trafic du réseau dans l'entreprise pourrait provenir de fichiers XML. March 18, 2003 - Web Services Edge - Parasoft Provides Sneak Preview of Enhanced Automated Error Prevention Tool for Web Services According to ZapThink Research, "XML and Web Services are increasingly becoming part of the everyday architecture and framework for IT. Web Services and their resulting business process transformations will eventually break down many of the barriers among enterprises. This 'seamlessness' will gradually extend over multiple enterprises, finally merging with and describing the economy as a whole." March 17, 2003 - NetworkWorld - Groups spar over Web standards "Most vendors see Web services as a land-grab opportunity and are seeking to stake claims on territory," says Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink. "Customers are far from implementing many of these immature specifications so we have to interpret this land-grab standards mentality as a way for vendors to position their companies and their products as the platforms of choice for implementing this new breed of application." March 17, 2003 - Internetnews - Actional Jumpstarts Web Services Management Ronald Schmelzer and Jason Bloomberg, senior analysts with XML and Web services research firm ZapThink, believe companies like Actional with such products as Looking Glass are necessary for management, something they consider a legitimate barrier to Web services adoption -- second only to security. "After all, companies won't deploy a Web Service that is central to their business unless they can get a grasp on how it is running, what side effects it is having on other systems, and how it is supporting critical business requirements. Thus, to do anything "real" with Web Services, you need management (combined with process, which is the third roadblock)," Schmelzer told internetnews.com. March 17, 2003 - Actional Press Release - Actional Unveils Web Services Management Server and Console "As more organizations deploy Web services across their enterprise, they will be faced with significant challenges in managing the ripple effects resulting from constant change across their service network," said Jason Bloomberg, ZapThink. "With the introduction of Looking Glass, combined with SOAPstation, Actional is one of the first vendors in the market to truly address this problem - helping organizations proactively monitor and manage their entire Web service network." March 14, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Sun Lashes Out at Microsoft, Others Over Spec ZapThink's Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg has repeatedly cited reliability as one of the key roadblocks companies are trying to address, along with security and management, en route to full acceptance in the sector. But according to Bloomberg, the specifications are somewhat different. Moreover, at least one of the WS-Reliability party, Sonic Software, doesn't have an issue with the WS-ReliableMessaging endeavor. "WS-Reliability is a point-to-point spec, while WS-ReliableMessaging is a more complex, end-to-end spec that addresses intermediaries -- an essential feature of B2B messaging," Bloomberg told internetnews.com. "Sonic understands that WS-Reliability is a first step, and is willing to work with the vendors in the other camp to develop a unified spec." April 14, 2003 - 01Net.fr (French) - Des accélérateurs matériels pour mieux gérer les flux XML L'engouement pour XML pourrait à terme engorger le réseau des entreprises. Ainsi, le cabinet d'analyses Zapthink, spécialisé dans XML et les services web, estime que, d'ici à 2006, le quart du trafic du réseau dans l'entreprise pourrait provenir de fichiers XML. Plus précisément, le traitement de ces fichiers pourrait avoir pour conséquence d'affaiblir les performances des serveurs comme des solutions d'équilibrage de charge. March 13, 2003 - Internetnews - Will Office 2003 Lead to Lock-in? Also, Ronald Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst of XML research firm ZapThink, noted that Microsoft's approach -- if Edwards is correct -- aligns more closely with a core tenet of XML theory: the separation of process and data. "The idea is for XML not to specify how the information should be processed, but rather leave that task to XSL (define) templates and other post-XML processing steps," he said. "XML is supposed to be a presentation-neutral format." Still, Schmelzer said that becomes more tricky when integration goes beyond the enterprise itself. March 13, 2003 - eWeek - Specs Advance Web Services Reliability Microsoft, IBM and Tibco are presenting a separate specification effort that differs from the OASIS spec in that it attempts to solve the issue of reliability along the whole end-to-end conversation of a Web service interaction including orchestrated steps across composite Web services that may traverse many different intermediate points and protocols," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., research firm. "Imagine a SOAP [Simple Object Access Protocol] request hopping from HTTP to MQ Series to a proprietary bus and back to HTTP and guaranteeing the reliability of that whole process. My guess is that they want to bolster the SOAP headers with reliability specifications that will persist with the message, rather than be applicable for particular end points. As part of this, supposedly, they will be providing a spec that doesn't require acknowledgement messages to be sent to each participating end point, but rather either succeed or fail reliably." March 13, 2003 - NetworkWorld - IBM, Microsoft team on reliability spec for Web services “Microsoft and IBM are concerned with the fact that the other proposed reliability spec focuses too much on reliability between two endpoints on a point-to-point communications path. They feel that is too brittle and confining,” says Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink. March 12, 2003 - The Daily Deal - Westbridge pulls in $10M "XML and Web services traffic runs on today's network relatively unimpeded," said Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink LLC, a Web services-focused research firm in Waltham, Mass. "The biggest challenge for companies rewriting applications so that they can be accessed easily by suppliers and other outside parties is making sure those accessing the network are authorized and authenticated. Westbridge has a pretty robust, effective software offering that addresses the issue." Jason Bloomberg, a colleague of Schmelzer at ZapThink, expects XML traffic on the network to increase significantly over the next few years, which would drive the security market. The company expects the XML and Web services security market to grow from around $120 million in 2002 to more than $4 billion by 2006. March 12, 2003 - Logic Library Press Release - LogicLibrary Adds to Executive Team In its recent report, "Service-Oriented Architecture: Tools and Best Practices," ZapThink, LLC identified service orientation as the fourth major shift in distributed computing since the mid-twentieth century and predicted the market for products and services will reach $98 billion by 2010. In this report, ZapThink pointed out that "the combination of increased asset consumability with its support for models makes Logidex a valuable tool for service-oriented architectures." March 12, 2003 - eWeek - Iona, Intel Team on Web Services Tool Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, said: "Well, IONA has finally hit upon a less-crowded segment of the market to focus their attention on, and we at ZapThink think they have a good chance here. The story is fairly clear: disconnected or sometimes-connected devices such as laptops, mobile phones, PDAs and other devices interact with Web Services differently than those always on the network. Basically, there needs to be a way to orchestrate long-running transactions over limited bandwidth and limited interaction capabilities. The traditional app server infrastructure and set of products coming out of Microsoft, BEA and IBM are not appropriate for this environment...It's possible that the other vendors will come to the realization that they too need to play in this space, but for now, IONA has an advantage they can hopefully hold onto." March 10, 2003 - IONA Press Release - IONA unveils Mobile Orchestrator - The First Component of its Next-Generation Rapid Integration Solutions "One of the primary challenges for organizations is building Web services that can easily adapt to changing business needs," said Ron Schmelzer, [Senior Analyst] of ZapThink. "By providing a means for users to build Web services that provide asynchronous connectivity for online or offline clients, IONA's Mobile Orchestrator enables businesses to produce and consume Web services that meet their business requirements, rather than change their methods of interaction to accommodate limited connection capabilities. Based on open-standards and service-oriented architecture principles, IONA introduces a much-needed solution to the integration software market." March 10, 2003 - InternetNews.com - OASIS Aims to Conquer Web Services Issue Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with XML and Web services research firm ZapThink, agreed with Kreger that management is an important part of Web services, noting that after security, it is the strongest barrier to adoption. However, he noted that many in the group already have such solutions. "The traction these companies are already seeing begs the question of whether we need a Web Services management standard at all, or should we leave the details up to the implementation of each vendor," Bloomberg told internetnews.com. March 10, 2003 - Internetnews.com - BEA Offloads Rapid App Software Rapid application modeling software "is a part of (BEA's) business we haven't heard that much about," said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with Zapthink, a research firm focused on XML-based standards and Web services. The sale of the software assets, he added, is a signal that BEA is more focused on value-added software for enterprise customers' use on top of existing application servers, at a time when application servers themselves are increasingly seen as commodity products in enterprise environments, Schmelzer said. March 10, 2003 - Network World - XML firewall appliance on tap from Reactivity "Companies need to have this kind of security for business-to-business Web services," says Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink. "But it is also needed for inside the enterprise because most security issues facing companies are internal." Bloomberg says it makes sense for Reactivity to offer a hardware/software combination of its technology. "Hardware goes in the data center where it is much easier to manage, and it provides additional speed benefits. These proxies have to work at wire speed," he says. March 10, 2003 - Securities Industry News - Swift ISO 15022 XML Move Ahead "The absence of a firm deadline definitely hurts any expectation for a short-term changeover to any standard, especially one as core to business as ISO 15022 XML," said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at Waltham, Mass.-based consultancy Zapthink. "Companies are motivated to adopt standards when there is primary economic benefit from doing so. By giving companies the flexibility to determine their own pace for adoption means adoption will have a longer time frame." March 10, 2003 - Sybase Newsletter - Eleven Years of Productivity Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has noticed 9.0’s versatility. “PowerBuilder 9 is an XML development tool as well as a Web Services development tool.” March 10, 2003 - ComputerWorld - Web Services Management Standard Sought Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass., said the WSDM committee might be able to produce a standard within a year. Microsoft's absence isn't that significant for now, since it could adopt the standard once it's published, he said. March 5, 2003 - TechWeb - Feds Join Liberty Alliance, But Group Still Needs More Support "Users will appreciate the added convenience of logging into multiple sites at once, but not at the price of more spam or invasions of their privacy," Jason Bloomberg, analyst for market researcher ZapThink LLC, said in a research note. March 2003 - Application Development Trends (Cover Article) - Principles of SOA (by Jason Bloomberg) The Web services honeymoon is over. Numerous enterprises have built their Web services pilot projects and have proven to themselves that this most recent evolution of distributed computing technology can reduce integration and development costs substantially. In addition, critical Web services standards are falling into place, and vendors are coming to market with robust security and management products. It is time for forward-looking enterprises to take the next step. March 2003 - MicroBanker (print) - Importance of XML Increases with CRM With networked devices, file systems, Web sites, CRM, and other disparate systems needing to communicate with each other, the XML standard is becoming increasingly important to the financial services industry, Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for ZapThink, LLC, Waltham, Mass., told technologists and bankers at the XML in financial services conference in New York at the end of February. March 1, 2003 - Application Development Trends - Can SOA bring out Web services' potential? as Jason Bloomberg points out in this month's cover story, ''Principles of SOA'' , the Web services honeymoon is over. It's time for the concept to deliver on its early promises. The pilot point-to-point integration projects are well underway and, for the most part, working pretty well. The standards issues are quickly resolving themselves and ample tools are emerging for Web services security and management. Now, says Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, it's time to start creating broader Web services applications that extend further within and beyond the enterprise. February 28, 2003 - CCID (Chinese) - 盖茨中国行 .Net微软要十年磨剑 时隔五年，微软公司董事长兼首席软件设计师比尔·盖茨重新踏上北京这片IT热土。他此行目的何在？他的到来能为国内软件产业带来些什么？在他眼里，未来的IT发展路途上，哪里埋藏着金矿？ Jason Bloomberg，ZapThink分析师，致力于XML和网络服务领域的研究； February 28, 2003 - 01Net.fr (French) - Vers une harmonisation des politiques d'accès Pour Ronald Schmelzer du cabinet Zapthink, spécialisé dans XML et les services web, « XACML fournit les moyens de définir et d'échanger les règles de sécurité de façon standardisée » February 27, 2003 - Line56 - SOA Best Practices Research group ZapThink, a boutique firm specializing in XML and Web services issues, has released a list entitled, "Ten Emerging Best Practices For Building SOAs." ZapThink's recommendations (penned by analyst Jason Bloomberg), include the following: create top-down guidelines and strategy for deployment, create a platform-agnostic model, upgrade on an ongoing basis, make the services as simple to consume as possible, avoid vendor lock-in and take advantage of interoperability to work with a mix of providers, and expose as much legacy data and functionality as possible as Web services. February 26, 2003 - Application Development Trends - Widespread adoption seen for XACML specs Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC (http://www.zapthink.com), a Waltham, Mass.-based firm specializing in XML technologies, agreed with Brown that XACML would appear in major vendors' Web servers within six months. The analyst estimated that it would have widespread implementation in Web services applications by the end of this year or early 2004. Noting that it was complementary to Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) from OASIS, Schmelzer said XACML would make it easier for end users to work with Web services applications. Operating similar to single sign-on, once a user's access privileges are set, they can then work uniformly with all of the services across the Internet that are incorporated into a Web services application, he said. February 25, 2003 - Application Development Trends - Toolmakers embrace XML But some of these lines are getting fuzzy. Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass., expects more people to start thinking of content as a service, and then delivering it as such. ''Among the parallels between content and Web services,'' he said, is ''how do you componentize content so that you can reuse it, discover it and then compose it into larger documents?'' If this ''content as a Web service'' idea does come to pass as Schmelzer expects, the lines between XML-based middleware used for integration and ''pure'' content creation or development tools will become blurred even further. February 25, 2003 - TechTarget - Apple and Web services, part two I don't really see much of a role for WebObjects," in large enterprises, says Ron Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst of the ZapThink consulting group. "I don't see it being used to develop enterprise-wide CRM applications or other enterprise applications." February 24, 2003 - eWeek - Services Boost Platforms "If Web services are the trees, then SOAs are the forest," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., research company. "Why? Because Web services without any architectural change just represent a new protocol for doing what we're already doing—connecting systems together in a point-to-point fashion. What SOAs represent is a change in the way we build, develop and deploy applications. "Instead of thinking of disparate systems that are connected together using standards, we can build systems that are themselves exposed as standards-based services or components." February 24, 2003 - ComputerWorld - OASIS Ratifies Access-Control Standard But it's unclear how great an impact XACML will have in the community of vendors supporting Web services, since the newly anointed standard from the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) is only one small piece of the Web services security puzzle, said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass. Bloomberg said he wouldn't be surprised to see XACML merge with another Web services standard, such as Web Services Policy (WS-Policy). February 24, 2003 - NetworkWorld - XML device could reduce XML-related bottlenecks XML documents can be from three to 20 times larger than a comparable binary or alternate text file representation, according to research firm ZapThink. To combat XML's overhead, DataPower and competitors such as Forum Systems and Sarvega have devised appliances designed to offload XML processing from traditional servers, which can get bogged down translating and routing XML documents. February 24, 2003 - BizTech (Japanese) - 06年にはサービス指向アーキテクチャが最も優勢に 「既存のITインフラを、柔軟なサービス指向アーキテクチャに移行することにより、企業は機敏性をはるかに高め、コストを大幅に削減することができる」（ZapThink社） 　ZapThink社上級アナリストのJason Bloomberg氏は、「多数の企業がWebサービス導入により、すでにコスト削減を実施している。そして次のステップとして、サービス指向アーキテクチャがもたらす機敏性を身につけ、競争力を高めようとしている」と述べた。 February 24, 2003 - ZDNet Wire (Japanese) - サービス指向のアーキテクチャで投資回収向上の見通し 調査会社ZapThinkは2月20日、「サービス指向のアーキテクチャ」と呼ばれるソフトウェア概念が2006年までに、ネットワーク化されたビジネスシステムの分野で支配的になるだろうとの予測を発表した。この予測通りになれば、企業のIT投資の回収状況が向上すると共に、ソフト業界は活況が続くことが見込まれる。 February 21, 2003 - eWeek - IBM Completes Rational Acquisition "The greatest challenge facing IBM's tools strategy is ease of use," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market research firm. "Visual Basic .Net is winning the usability battle, actually attracting Java developers to .Net. IBM's WSAD [WebSphere Studio Application Developer], on the other hand, is a difficult tool to use, and Rational's tools, including the XKE and ClearCase, are also a challenge to learn and use. IBM now has a comprehensive tools offering, but they will continue to lose ground to Microsoft if they don't improve usability." February 21, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Microsoft Offers Security Tool for Pending Server Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst for XML and Web services research firm ZapThink, discussed Microsoft's play with internetnews.com. "The approach Microsoft is taking is to use a centralized system that can be accessed via Web Services. This single trusted source would control all the important steps in the DRM process. In essence, it would be an end-to-end, closed-loop system as exists in a number of major DRM products from companies such as those that used to be produced by InterTrust," Schmelzer said. "In this DRM environment the system has to package rights, encrypt the content, put it in a central repository, provide means for activation on the receiving end, issue licenses, and provide a way to inform the rendering application (Adobe, RealPlayer, etc.) about the terms of the license such as number of times to view, rights to print, and expiration. This monolithic model for DRM, while secure and doable, presents a number of hurdles to the adoption of this important piece of functionality that can enable trustworthy computing going forward. February 20, 2003 - CNet - Flexible software architectures on rise If the experts have it right, a long-established software concept called a "service-oriented architecture" will give businesses better return on their information technology dollars and keep the software industry vibrant. Research firm ZapThink released on Thursday its prediction that such architectures will become the dominant designs for networked business systems by 2006. And analysts at Gartner are predicting that service-oriented architectures will enter mainstream usage this year. February 20, 2003 - E-Business*Standards*Today - Study: service oriented architecture to eclipse enterprise software market by 2010 A report by XML research company ZapThink LLC says service-oriented architectures based on open standards will form a new generation of distributed computing technologies, and become the most predominant architecture by 2006. ZapThink's report also says some 69 percent of the total enterprise software market will be service-oriented by 2010. The report indicates that service orientation by itself is not a market, but more of an approach to distributed computing. February 20, 2003 - eBizQ - Report: Service-Oriented Archtictures Heating Up "If Web Services are the trees, then Service-oriented architectures are the forest," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. "ZapThink's research shows that hundreds of companies have already reduced the cost of integration in their organizations by using Web Services, and many are ready for the next step -- achieving the substantial competitive advantage from business agility that Service-oriented architectures can provide." February 20, 2003 - Hi Tech Insider (Italian) - A piccoli passi verso l'architettura .NET: i Web service di ieri, oggi e domani ”Le mansioni dei principali servizi Web, come quelli forniti da Google e Amazon fanno ormai parte della routine giornaliera, essi però svolgono quotidianamente compiti limitati di scambio d’informazioni e niente di più. Ma questo è il business reale odierno, mentre bisogna guardare al futuro”, afferma Jason Bloomberg, analista di ZapThink. February 19, 2003 - TechRepublic - IT analysts: Web services will contribute to cost-cutting strategies but grow slowly Another analyst firm, ZapThink, which reports exclusively on Web services and XML, offered its own views of the roadblocks to Web services adoption in the article "2002 Retrospective and Thinking Ahead." According to the article, “IT organizations realize that they have to overcome critical security and management challenges before their Web services implementations would meet broad enterprise needs.” In another article from ZapThink, "Thrift: the New Normal," senior analyst Jason Bloomberg offers an interesting view on IT spending and Web services. According to the article, "… many people are betting that Web services and service orientation are the ‘next big thing’ that will drive IT this year or next. Since ZapThink focuses on the emerging market for service-oriented computing, you might think that we'd be first in line to trumpet the power of Web services to bring back the flow of capital. Well, not so fast. February 18, 2003 - CNet - Start-up accelerates XML Web services Other companies that develop network hardware specific to XML and security processing include Sargeva, Forum Systems and networking performance company F5 Networks, according to analysts. These companies are tackling the problems that XML and Web services bring to corporate data centers, where companies house servers, storage and applications, said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink. "XML processing is terribly inefficient...so there's definitely going to be a market," said Schmelzer. "But in order for these companies to be financially viable, they will have to find early adopters that are having these problems." February 17, 2003 - eWeek (Print-only) - Brewing up a standard "Vertical industries of all types are flocking to XML since it solves a basic problem for inter-company communication: the standardization of business documents and exchanges in their industry," said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with market research company ZapThink LLC. "When a company has hundreds, or even thousands, of suppliers, customers, and partners, it becomes an almost impossible task to manage the interactions if each of the business parties has their own proprietary way of communicating. The movement to standards, especially in a particular vertical market, is therefore an obvious and needed step to guarantee the efficiency of the market." February 17, 2003 - SearchSecurity - Web services security vendors focus on access control, XML firewalls That hasn't changed much, as customers wait for vendors to finalize standards such as XML Key Management Specification (XKMS is for managing the keys needed to encrypt and decrypt Web services messages), says Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at ZapThink, an analysis and consulting firm in Waltham, Mass. Single-point authentication and access control are important because Web services can't make users more efficient if those users have to enter a new user ID and password each time their request hits another application. "Larger entities might have [10,000, 20,000] or 30,000 users," says Bloomberg, each of whom might have different access rights on dozens of different systems -- access rights that need to be changed, or even withdrawn, as the employee's responsibilities change or they leave the company. February 17, 2003 - Network World - A restful approach to Web services "From a product perspective, REST is almost invisible," says Ronald Schmeltzer [sic], a senior analyst with ZapThink LLC. "If the REST people want to have their day, they're going to have to get it into the tools that create or consume Web services." February 16, 2003 - Haworth Press - Review of XML and Web Services Unleashed A review of the book "XML and Web Services Unleashed" by Ronald Schmelzer and Jason Bloomberg. February 15, 2003 - SD Times - Web Services Standards: Maturing or Fracturing? You may have noticed, as has Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst for Web services and XML analysis firm ZapThink, that “they’re entirely different groups with no overlap.” But fear not for standards wars, because Bloomberg thinks that while corporate politics are, as always, playing a role, the real reason that two different groups of companies produced these standards prototypes is that the Web services software vendors are splitting up the work among them. Bloomberg said, “IBM, for example, was working on reliability, but they’re happy for Sun to do the heavy lifting. And as for the new WS-Security initiative, pretty much all the WS vendors are supporting it.” Indeed, he explained, “the idea behind both group’s organization is that for the sake of efficiency, it’s easier for small groups of companies to hammer a standard out and then let the WS community review and comment on it. Then, after a review period, both will probably be released as draft standards.” February 15, 2003 - SD Times - Web Services Standards Get Messier Is there something missing here? On the security side, we have all these major players, except Oracle and Sun, and on the reliability front, we’ve got a lot of heavyweights, except Microsoft and IBM. Now, as I report in “Web Services Standards: Maturing or Fracturing?” (page 22), some analysts, like Jason Bloomberg of ZapThink, think that it will all work out in the end. More than that, Bloomberg seems to believe that the companies divided up the work so that the overall standardization of Web services happens sooner rather than later. February 14, 2003 - Line56 - Content and Web Services reuse, companies need to move from ad-hoc content creation to componentization, and XML and Web services are a natural path to this goal. That's a central conclusion of the recent report from researcher ZapThink, the considerably-titled "XML in the Content Lifecycle: Creating, Managing, Publishing, Syndicating and Protecting Content with XML." The name also suggests the other main tenet of the report: that architectures will increasingly move to a content lifecycle made up of the titled elements. February 14, 2003 - eWeek - WS-Reliability Spec in OASIS' Hands Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, Cambridge, Mass., said, "Developers and IT organizations won't implement any important Web services without being able to guarantee that they will be executed in a guaranteed manner." February 11, 2003 - TechWeb - Web Services Startup Hitches Wagon To Visual Studio .Net AmberPoint, along with competitors Confluent Software Inc., Digital Evolution Inc., and Actional Corp., are "gaining traction" within the Web services management market, Jason Bloomberg, analyst for high-tech researcher ZapThink LLC, said. Unlike many of the 14 startups selling Web services-management software, the four companies have customers and partnerships with bigger vendors and are shipping product. Confluent, for example, also has a relationship with Microsoft. "Because the big guys are going to be dominating Web services management within about two years, what are these small guys going to do?" Bloomberg said. "There's too many vendors, and the big guys are going to be eating them for lunch in a couple of years." February 11, 2003 - dot.net Magazin (German) - Experten werfen einen Blick auf die Zukunft von XML Anlässlich des 5. Geburtstags der XML, die gerne auch als Lingua Franca des Internets bezeichnet wird, hat news.com zwölf namhafte XML-Experten über Geschichte und Zukunftsaussichten der Extensible Markup Language befragt. Unter anderem äußern sich ZapThink-Analyst Jason Bloomberg, Jon Bosak von Sun Microsystems sowie Laura Yecies, Vize-Präsidentin von Netscape Technology Development, zur Entwicklung von XML und berichten teilweise von persönlichen Erlebnissen mit der Web-Sprache. February 11, 2003 - TechTarget - Apple and Web services, part one But while WebObjects is the most visible Apple-related Web service product, it's not the only one, according to Ron Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst of the ZapThink consulting group. "Another significant advance (for Apple in Web services) is the OS X operating system itself," he maintains. "It has a UNIX core, and so it will be much easier to port open source Web services tools to the Mac platform." Additionally, he says that the FileMaker workgroup database, owned by the FileMaker Apple subsidiary, may quietly become a backdoor development tool used by Apple devotees in corporations, particularly at the departmental level. February 10, 2003 - CNet (and Business Week) - Microsoft moves ahead on Xdocs Microsoft is hoping to corner a share of the XML-based content management software market. Market researcher ZapThink, based in Waltham, Mass., estimates the value of the market for XML-based content management software at more than $11 billion by 2008. February 10, 2003 - CNet - XML Makes Its Mark: Developers reflect on the Web's lingua franca Five years after XML's birth as a W3C recommendation, CNET News.com caught up with some of the people closest to its genesis to gauge the successes, failures and coming challenges for a key technology that has come to underpin the Web. Features Jason Bloomberg and Ron Schmelzer! Jason: ZapThink believes that once this transition period concludes, the golden age for distributed computing and the Web will begin. So on this fifth birthday of XML, I'd like to say: The best is yet to come. Ron: Happy birthday XML! The past five years have really borne fruit for XML and some of its most important applications, especially Web services. The dramatic uptake of standardized ways of representing information has had a significant impact on the way companies think about the information they produce and the applications they share. February 10, 2003 - TechWeb - Microsoft Names XML Forms Software, Touts Application In Health Care "I think [InfoPath] is pretty compelling,” said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink, a market research firm that specializes in covering XML issues. “Microsoft hasn't been a strong player from the content-management perspective, where the key problem is how to you allow people to reuse content.” He sees InfoPath as a major step by Microsoft in the move to bring non-technical content creators into the fold of those able to create forms independent of any back-end system, but that can still be integrated with those systems. February 10, 2003 - Securities Industry News - FIX Vendor Seeks Healthier Sector And turning from Wall Street to health care is not necessarily the quickest of fixes. "There are many differences between the financial services and health care markets that would make this transition far from easy," said Ronald Schmelzer, senior consultant for Zapthink, a Boston-based consultancy. But it's been a slow go. "Health care organizations are hurting for money," Schmelzer said. "While they are being pressed to adopt electronic message formats for HIPAA compliance, they are not really in the position to heavily invest in new technologies. Financial services firms, on the other hand, are aggressive technology implementers." February 10, 2003 - ComputerWorld - Sun Says Java Will Support Key Web Services Standards Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass., said the decision to support WS-I's basic profile shows that Sun is serious about its activity in the organization. February 7, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Web Services Show Promise, but How Much? But two smaller research firms, ZapThink.com and Redmonk aren't necessarily in agreement with information the larger firms are offering. They feel the monetary estimates may be conservative and that other vendors will add choice to the market. ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer, whose company analyzes XML and Web services technologies exclusively, respectfully disagreed with the approach of the IDC and Gartner reports with respect to Web services. "Trying to quantify "Web Services" abstractly is akin to trying to quantify the market for "client-server" or "object orientation." They are missing the point. If you truly buy into the notion that Web Services will be an underlying technology that powers service-oriented applications and point-to-point integration solutions, then there is no concept of a separate "market" for Web Services. Rather, Web Services becomes part and parcel of many existing and emerging markets." Schmelzer agreed, however, that Web services will generate a tremendous amount of financial possibilities -- perhaps even more than IDC has allowed for. "The $21 billion number is a figure that might be off by as much as two to three times in size, but it definitely illustrates the promise that Web Services holds for a wide range of markets," Schmelzer said. February 6, 2003 - Application Development Trends - Web services invade content management Web services as an integration technology is an established trend. Some analysts predict that Web services will emerge as a strong B2B technology this year. Next, said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at Waltham, Mass.-based ZapThink LLC (http://www.zapthink.com), Web services will become an important technology in content management systems. Schmelzer said forward-thinking IT organizations are taking what they learned about software components and Web services and applying it to the management of enterprise content from technical documentation to marketing brochures. February 5, 2003 - ComputerWorld - Java platform to support Web services interoperability technologies Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass., said the decision to support WS-I's basic profile shows that Sun is serious about its activity in the organization. Although other major vendors signed up, Sun had resisted joining WS-I for months, claiming it deserved status as a founding member. Sun is now seeking to become a member of WS-I's board of directors. February 4, 2003 - CNet (also in BusinessWeek and ZDNet) - Security key goal for Web services group "Once the WS-I starts diving into the meat of things, like security, messaging, reliability and transactions, the question becomes whether it will get the support of vendors--and will they have the compliance schemes," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink. "That remains to be seen. And in order for it to work, it can't be a political process." February 4, 2003 - Internetnews.com - Sun to Augment J2EE 1.4 with Web Services Features Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst for XML and Web services research firm ZapThink, said Sun's support of the WS-I Basic Profile in J2EE 1.4 assures the public that Sun is making a solid commitment to the real-world application of Web services. "Sun has struggled with both its software product strategy as well as its Web Services strategy, and this announcement is an encouraging sign that Sun at least is finally getting its Web Services act together," Bloomberg told internetnews.com. "However, only time will tell whether Sun can translate this leadership into real products that customers want to buy. If anything, Sun's position as the shepherd of Java has actually impeded its ability to drive software sales, a problem that Sun will have to turn around soon. ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer was even more impressed than his colleague, calling Sun's progress both impressive and remarkable. February 4, 2003 - TechWeb - Sun Adds Web Service Interoperability To J2EE 1.4, Delays Release Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink, applauds the decision. “It's definitely a sign that Sun's coming around and is serious about interoperability,” he said. “Sun talks about interoperability but is always having spats with IBM and Microsoft, so it's good that they're putting their money where their mouth is.” The WS-I Basic Profile isn't so much a new standard, said Bloomberg, but the pragmatic side of standards application. “Think of them as the ground rules for interoperability between Web services standards,” Bloomberg said. “There are a lot of areas open to interpretation [by developers], but the Basic Profile outlines how you use them.” February 4, 2003 - TechTarget - Battle may be brewing for WS-I board seats Ronald Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst with ZapThink, said the WS-I voting process is ambiguous, making it unclear if either WebMethods or Cape Clear has a shot at winning a seat. He also said Sun is still the favorite to win one of the seats. However, it is possible for Sun to not win a seat, even though the two new spots were primarily created to accommodate Sun. "I don't know how the existing members are going to vote," said Schmelzer. "Are they going to vote politically for their own interests, or are they going to vote in the best interest of the community?" February 4, 2003 - CRN - Sun: J2EE 1.4 To Include WS-I Basic Profile Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with research firm ZapThink, said the inclusion of the WS-I basic profile in J2EE 1.4 shows a real product-based commitment by Sun to promote Java as a platform for Web services that interoperate with disparate vendor technology. "By really taking the message of Web services interoperability to heart and implementing the Basic Profile in J2EE 1.4, Sun is basically saying, 'OK, we buy into the vision of standards-based, loosely coupled computing. Here's our first stab at this from a product perspective,' " Schmelzer said. "This now will, of course, put Microsoft and IBM in the position of having to do the same in their product sets, or face looking hypocritical for first refusing Sun's entry into the WS-I and then poo-pooing their efforts." February 4, 2003 - InformationWeek - Web Services Spotlighted In Java Update When J2EE version 1.4 ships this summer, it will support the Web Services Interoperability (WS-I) Organization's Basic Profile specification, which describes how apps are to interact regardless of their operating environment. Ultimately, this is going to benefit all companies using J2EE, says Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst with ZapThink, an XML and Web-services research and analyst firm. There's also a strategic benefit for Sun in the new update, Bloomberg says. Version 1.4 helps keep Sun, which is looking for a spot on the WS-I's board, from being marginalized in the process of developing Web-services standards, says Ron Schmelzer, also a senior ZapThink analyst. BEA Systems, IBM, Microsoft, and webMethods wrote the Basic Profile standard. "Sun's biggest challenge on the software side has been capitalizing on their leadership in Java," Bloomberg says. February 3, 2003 - eWeek - IBM Looks Beyond J2EE Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market research firm, said: "IBM's WebSphere team understands and is committed to service orientation, and will take full advantage of the Web Services support in J2EE 1.4. What's most exciting about IBM's SOA [service-oriented architecture] leadership is that they will be helping their customers move beyond the simple use of Web services for simplifying integration to the more complex construction of service-oriented architectures based upon Web Services standards and the WSIF [Web Services Invocation Framework]. Enterprise customers who implement such SOAs will potentially see substantial business benefits in the form of increased business agility." February 3, 2003 - Mass. High Tech - Surf’s up for Swingtide’s Web services ‘product’ Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst with ZapThink who follows the Web services and management space, agrees. “What’s happening with Web services is that there’s a critical mass of companies using Web services for integration for simple integration projects,” Bloomberg said. Bloomberg said ZapThink projects the market for managed Web services to grow from $30 million a year this year to $9.2 billion by 2007. February 3, 2003 - eWeek - IBM Bolsters Grid Computing Line Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., research company, picked up on that theme: "It's not clear that IBM's grid computing strategy is truly service-oriented—that is, exposing heterogeneous network resources as services to customers. "The story is more of an outsourced systems strategy rather than a true services story," Bloomberg said. "They incorporate Web services standards in the underlying grid computing technology, but the services story is lost when presenting solutions to customers. "This deficiency is somewhat surprising considering that there are parts of IBM who very strongly support service orientation," he said. February 3, 2003 - Swingtide Press Release - Swingtide Announces Industry's First Pre-Emptive Software for XML and Web Services Management Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink, said: "Service-oriented architectures based on XML and web services offer enormous benefit to enterprises in terms of cost savings and business agility. But building such architectures is a complex task that requires careful planning and design, especially in heterogeneous environments. Swingtide offers companies an in-depth, vendor-neutral approach to building the necessary skills real companies need to get started with SOAs. Of all the web services offerings we've seen, Swingtide's QoB Lab and QoB Assistant are unique in their ability to meet customers' need to understand how to leverage the power of XML and web services to build SOAs." February 3, 2003 - Security Industries News - Research Standards converge around XML "XBRL, MDDL and RIXML are targeting different but related user groups," said Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at Zapthink, a Boston-based consultancy. "In particular, XBRL is targeted at the bean counters,' while MDDL and RIXML are targeted at the financial analysts." "Is there overlap between RIXML and XBRL? I don't think so," said Zapthink's Schmelzer. "XBRL is squarely focused on numerical data to support financial analysis that is of high value in the trading environment. Sure, there's numerical data in RIXML and there's analytical data in XBRL, but both of these are tangential to each other's core value propositions. XBRL has tremendous support because financial data is so important to companies and government research." January 2003 - DM Review - ZapThink: XML and Web Services Major Impact on Content Life Cycle Market XML and Web Services are making a major impact on products focused on the content life cycle: content creation, management, distribution, syndication and protection, concludes a report authored by ZapThink, LLC, an analyst firm focused on XML and Web Services. The report concludes that the primary challenge in the enterprise for producers of content – information that is intended for human consumption – is content reuse: the ability to integrate content from disparate sources January 29, 2003 - CNet (Asia) - Web services finds new life as corporate bridge "It's not as exciting as those public Web services like Google or Amazon. In a way, it's dull, plain-old everyday business. But it's real business," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink. January 29, 2003 - CNet (Asia) - Web services finds new life as corporate bridge "It's not as exciting as those public Web services like Google or Amazon. In a way, it's dull, plain-old everyday business. But it's real business," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink. January 27, 2003 - Internetnews.com - BEA Service Aims to Ease XML-Java Fusion Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst for XML and Web services research firm ZapThink described the significance of BEA's announcement as a acknowledgement that XML and Java integration are tough tasks worthy of addressing. "It is clear that BEA realizes that working with XML in Java is not particularly optimal today. This is also the case in trying to shoe-horn XML in other object-oriented or procedural languages," Schmelzer told internetnews.com. "What is interesting is that XML is viewed differently from different developer perspectives: programmers think of XML documents as objects and database designers think of XML as data sets. Each of these views is incorrect, which results in lots of shoe-horning in trying to get their respective developer environments to work with XML." Januart 27, 2003 - eWeek - IBM to Push Grids on the Enterprise Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., research firm, picked up on that theme: "It's not clear that IBM's grid computing strategy is truly service-oriented—that is, exposing heterogeneous network resources as services to customers. The story is more of an outsourced systems strategy rather than a true services story. They incorporate Web services standards in the underlying grid computing technology, but the services story is lost when presenting solutions to customers. This deficiency is somewhat surprising considering that there are parts of IBM who very strongly support service orientation." January 27, 2003 - eWeek - XML: Just Add Water Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, agreed. "Water is original and exciting. It just makes a lot of sense to use XML to write all your code in. If all developers knew Water, then everybody could write code for every tier—Web pages, middleware, Web services, whatever—all in XML. Goodbye, JavaScript, [JavaServer Pages], C#, Java, VB .Net." Bloomberg said the only problem is developer support. "For Clear Methods and their Steam product to be successful, Water has to take hold in the developer community, and that is an enormous challenge. Unfortunately, much as I like them and their ideas, there's a real chance that Water will fall in the category of Great Ideas that Don't Succeed." January 27, 2003 - Integration News - Dynamic Content to Spur Demand for XML Skills In 2003, enterprise developers and end users are spending more time trying to find and format content than they spend creating it, according to a study released earlier this month by ZapThink, an XML and web services consultancy. Proper use of XML and web services tools and techniques will emerge as a top enterprise strategy for reversing this trend, ZapThink concluded in its report entitled "XML in the Content Lifecycle". One key reason, ZapThink said, is this: "The primary challenge in the enterprise for producers of content -- information that is intended for human consumption -- is content reuse: the ability to integrate content from disparate sources." "Content processes are currently where distributed computing applications were in the mid-1980s," said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. "Content today is frequently out of context, hard to reuse, constantly changing with multiple versions in multiple languages, and insecure. Content solutions that leverage XML promise to improve the economics of working with content considerably." January 27, 2003 - Advisor - XML Critical to Content Management Success XML and Web services are making a major impact on content lifecycle products, according to a study from ZapThink, an analyst firm focused on XML and Web services. Enterprises face several content management challenges, researchers say. For one, content is often stored out of context, hard to reuse, constantly changing, and insecure. The study also notes that enterprise content producers spend 60 percent of their time locating, formatting, and structuring content, and only 40 percent of their time creating it. To meet these challenges, content management solutions are moving towards componentizing content in XML and then accessing it as discoverable services on a network, ZapThink says. January 24, 2003 - EContent Magazine - XML Content Lifecycle Market: $11.6B by 2008 ZapThink has released a report entitled "XML in the Content Lifecycle," which looks at how XML is impacting the content management markets. ZapThink found that XML and Web Services are making a major impact on products focused on the content lifecycle, such as content creation, management, distribution, syndication, and protection. The report concludes that the primary challenge in the enterprise for producers of content is content reuse--the ability to integrate content from disparate sources. "Content processes are currently where distributed computing applications were in the mid-1980's," said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. "Content today is frequently out of context, hard to reuse, constantly changing with multiple versions in multiple languages, and insecure. Content solutions that leverage XML promise to improve the economics of working with content considerably." January 24, 2003 - TechTarget - Quick Takes: ZapThink looks at Web services, content mgmt XML and Web services research firm ZapThink LLC, based in Waltham, Mass., has released a new report highlighting how XML is impacting the content management market. ZapThink's "XML in the Content Lifecycle" report examines how current ad-hoc content management processes are moving toward models where content is componentized using XML, and then turned into "services" that are discoverable on the network. According to the report, the primary challenge in the enterprise for producers of content -- information that is intended for human consumption -- is content reuse: the ability to integrate content from disparate sources. January 24, 2003 - XML2Day (German) - Oasis gründet neue Gremien für XML-Standards Jason Bloomberg, ZapThink-Analyst, hält die Gründung der neuen Gremien für äußerst sinnvoll: "Einer der größten Vorteile von XML ist dessen unbegrenzte Erweiterbarkeit, die man sich für die Erstellung von eigenem Vokabular zu Nutzen machen kann. Verschiedene Industriezweige können sich somit auf ein spezielleres XML-Vokabular einigen. Einziger Wermutstropfen: Der so genannte "Turmbau zu Babel"-Effekt macht sich immer deutlicher bemerkbar ...". January 24, 2003 - InternetWeek - Why The Web Won't Replace EDI By switching to AS2, Wal-Mart can reach smaller suppliers, thereby extending its network. "AS2 reduces the cost for mid-size companies to participate," Jason Bloomberg, analyst for research firm ZapThink, said. "AS2 is a way to make EDI more economical." For companies like Wal-Mart, new business-to-business technology, such as XML (extensible markup language), offers little that can't be immediately gained by Internet-enabled EDI, he added. January 24, 2003 - 01 Informatique - Le contrôle d' accès aux services web est en voie de maturation "Le contrôle de accès et la gestion des indentites sont au coeur de la problématique de sécurité des services web," affirme Ronald Schmelzer, analyste à ZapThink, un cabinet spécialisé dans XML et la services web. January 23, 2003 - CNet News.com - Big growth seen for content products The market for XML-based content-lifecycle products--software and services that allow content to be easily reused in a number of formats--will grow tenfold to $11.6 billion in annual revenue by 2008, according to a report released Thursday. ZapThink, a research firm focusing on XML and Web services, said in the report that tools based on XML, the lingua franca of Web services, represent the best hope for modernizing outdated content systems. "The world of writing and managing content is basically where computing was in the 1980s," said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst for ZapThink. "Everything else has been automated, but content is still cut and paste." January 23, 2003 - TechWeb - XML Growing In Content-Management Apps The market for so-called content lifecycle applications based on XML is expected to grow from $1.8 billion this year to more than $11.6 billion by 2008, ZapThink said in a recent study. In five years, ZapThink predicts, 60 percent of all content lifecycle products will be XML-enabled. The study also found that content producers today spend more than 60 percent of their time locating, formatting, and structuring content, and just 40 percent of their time actually creating it. January 23, 2003 - E-Business Standards Today - Report: XML content solutions market to exceed $11 billion by 2008 Research company ZapThink says in a new report that the market for XML content lifecycle solutions is expected to grow from $US 1.8 billion in 2003 to over $11.6 billion by 2008. ZapThink defines the content lifecycle as content creation, management, distribution, syndication, and protection. The company predicts by 2008, about 60 percent of all content lifecycle products will be XML-enabled. The report concludes that the primary challenge in the enterprise for producers of content -- information that is intended for human consumption -- is content reuse: the ability to integrate content from disparate sources. January 22, 2003 - CNet - Standards body tackles business XML Though XML is quickly becoming the de facto method for defining business documents, the various industry initiatives connected with XML need to be coordinated, said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink. "One of the big advantages of XML is its extensibility, which lets you build your own vocabulary. But there also is a downside, because you have this 'Tower of Babel' of vocabularies," Bloomberg said. "As industries struggle with standardization of (information technology) initiatives, it makes sense for individual industry consortia to standardize their underlying XML vocabularies," he added. January 21, 2003 - Microsoft Watch - XML Data Stores: Hot or Not? The XML and Web services consultants at ZapThink recently completed a multi-client study on XML data-store technology. Given Microsoft's insatiable interest in XML, we asked ZapThink Senior Analyst and Founder Ron Schmelzer for his two cents on what Microsoft, its competitors, its partners and its customers need to know about XML data-store technology. January 20, 2003 - TechTarget - Users say an X# language could ease XML handling Ronald Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, a research firm in Waltham, Mass., said it's difficult to take sides when nobody knows what the language will be like, or if it will ever take shape. However, he said that there is an industry-wide demand for easier XML processing. "You need a new class of language that treats XML as something you want to process in context, where if you process a certain part, you know what its parents' nodes are and what its children's nodes are, but you don't necessarily need to know the rest of the document to process that node," Schmelzer said. Schmelzer said that supporting data rather than objects would be a drastic change for the industry's major platform vendors, especially for Java-centric companies like Sun Microsystems and BEA Systems Inc., but a language like X# could have value for them in the context of scripting. January 17, 2003 - CNet - Dancing around Web services By that, the W3C means a decision to drop intellectual property claims on the specification--which analysts don't necessarily expect the BPEL4WS co-authors to do. "I think the W3C should be careful, because the OASIS group could make the claim that the whole notion of Web services flow and choreography is in their purview," said Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink, a research firm that focuses on XML (Extensible Markup Language) and Web services. January 17, 2003 - InfoWorld - OASIS to preview XML system for standard business documents An analyst, however, said he doubted OASIS would succeed in providing standard forms for business. "How can hospitals and manufacturing firms and aerospace industries all share the same notion of an invoice?" asked Ronald Schmelzer, analyst at ZapThink in Waltham, Mass. "Even if they all adopt the core business language, they're going to have different extensions on it," Schmelzer said. "I don't think this is going to be any magic pill," for getting documents to agree with each other, he added. Schmelzer said he favored a concept known as the semantic Web, which would have computers are more intelligent in understanding semantics. January 16, 2003 - Line56 - E.piphany Bundles IBM WebSphere However, analyst Jason Bloomberg of ZapThink points out that there's still a little distance to go in order to get to a truly open and interoperable environment. "While in theory a Java application should run fine on either [BEA] WebLogic or WebSphere, it doesn't work that way in practice. They are both J2EE-compliant, but there's a lot of proprietary stuff in there. This is a limitation of component-based architectures that Web services seeks to address." Bloomberg says that exposing a CRM application as a Web service could allow it to interoperate with various J2EE and non-J2EE elements of an enterprise's technology stack. Such a practice wouldn't replace a run-time environment (as application servers are still needed to deal with scalability, database pooling, fault tolerance, redundancy, clustering, &c.) but would still be a good idea for CRM adopters, he counsels. January 16, 2003 - Baseline - Consumer Products: When Software Bugs Bite Several analyst firms—including Patricia Seybold Group, ZapThink, and Venture Development Corp.—blame the technology industry itself, which is loosely regulated and tends to rush products to market to try to gain market share. January 14, 2003 - TechTarget - Looking back on Web services in 2002 The year proved to be a pivotal one in terms of product development, says Ron Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst of the ZapThink consulting group. "It was a big year for Web services," he maintains. "It moved from being a bunch of specs to a bunch of products. The year before, there weren't products —there were just proposals." In terms of standards, Schmelzer believes that the movement towards agreeing on security standards was key, because that is one of the major remaining roadblocks to the widespread deployment of Web services. January 13, 2003 - Light Reading - DataPower Secures XML Another challenge is that standards for securing XML aren't in place yet. At least one source says that could make it harder for DataPower and its competitors to sell their products. “It’s more of a sales challenge than a technology challenge,” says analyst Ron Schmelzer of ZapThink LLC, a market researcher specializing in XML. In the absence of firm standards, customers may balk, even though DataPower and others make their products flexible enough to accommodate standards changes as they evolve. January 9, 2003 - ZDNet - Group adds backbone to Web services Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink, said WS-Reliability tackles one of the long-standing hurdles to Web services adoption, which also include security, management and transactions. "The big problem with the way people are implementing Web services today is that they are using pretty brittle protocols like HTTP (hypertext transport protocol). It's OK for your browser, but no one in their right mind is going to implement a travel reservation booking system with that," said Schmelzer. "The application had better succeed or reliably fail. It shouldn't be that the server didn't respond." January 9, 2003 - Network Magazine - Emerging Technology: XML - Racing Ahead? It might comprise just two percent of today's corporate traffic, but XML is growing, and growing fast. ZapThink (www.zapthink.com), an XML and Web services analysis group, estimates that by 2006 the protocol will constitute 25 percent of all corporate network traffic. January 9, 2003 - eWeek - Group Tackles Web Services Reliability Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, Cambridge, Mass., said reliability is the third critical roadblock to Web services adoption after security and management. The "WS-Reliability specification is an obvious no-brainer," he said. This is "because developers and IT organizations won't implement any important Web services without being able to guarantee that they will be executed in a guaranteed manner." Yet, major players in the Web services world, namely IBM Corp. and Microsoft Corp., have yet to weigh in on WS-Reliability, and ZapThink analysts said it would be difficult to "guarantee" reliability without those companies onboard. January 9, 2003 - Internetnews.com - IT Vendors Publish Web Services Messaging Spec XML and Web services research firm ZapThink said reliability, along with process definition and execution, makes up the third critical roadblock to Web Services adoption after security and management. "It's interesting that there are no common members between today's announcement and the WS-Policy/Trust/SecureConversation announcement last month [Sonic, Hitachi, Fujitsu, NEC, Oracle and Sun for today's announcement, and IBM, Microsoft, Verisign, BEA, SAP, and RSA Security for the December announcement]," said ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg. "This divergence may indicate a continuation of some of the infighting that has gone on between these groups, but then again, it may turn out that everybody is willing to cooperate on this one. In the grand scheme of things, WS-Reliability doesn't present much of a threat to anyone, so ZapThink predicts that the IBM/Microsoft group is likely to accept this specification with little or no significant changes requested." January 9, 2003 - destinationCRM - Get the Message Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst for ZapThink, a web services analyst group, believes that while the WS-Reliability specification isn't breaking any new ground, it is providing a standard that can be applied to all Web messaging. Bloomberg believes that the only major controversy associated with this project is the fact that none of the members of this particular group are members of any other major Web standards partnerships that include industry giants like IBM and Microsoft. January 9, 2003 - InfoWorld - W3C approves specification for Web site scripting An analyst, however, while saying the specification could yield better Web browsers, said support still is needed. "DOM Level 2 is the latest rev of this model," said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, in Waltham, Mass., in an e-mail response to an inquiry. "While this is important for the developer crowd, the user population as a whole won't really have much interaction with the DOM. It really is up to Web browser vendors like Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, and the like to add this functionality to their products. So, we will need to wait until this makes its way into products before we can see any benefit," he said. January 8, 2003 - Internetnews.com - OASIS Works to ID Distributed Directory Services ZapThink analyst Ronald Schmelzer discussed the tackling of XRI with internetnews.com. "The XRI idea is a good one, although it really conflicts with many of the initiatives for using URLs within the context of Web Services. For example, much of the purpose of UDDI is to facilitate the dynamic discovery and binding to services that themselves are defined at specific URLs. Thus, the URLs represent a specific binding location and UDDI should be the way to isolate us from having to know those URLs ahead of time -- an automated search engine, to overly simplify things. However, XRI claims that they will be working within the concept of URIs and directory services, such as UDDI. But, the challenge is to get their XRI naming mechanism adopted by those that facilitate creation and deployment of Web Services." January 8, 2003 - CNet (News.com) - Standards body tries to improve on URLs "You can think of XRI as a system that provides 'URLs for everything'--data, systems, organizations, services and people. Currently, we don't have a single, application and protocol-neutral way for identifying these types of resources," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink. The challenge that OASIS and XRI backers face is the pervasiveness of URLs, said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink. "Sure, things would work better if the universe used XRIs to identify location-independent services, but it will require widespread and consistent implementation," said Schmelzer. "They will need support of the WS-I (Web services Interoperability Organization) as well as the 'heavyweights'--IBM, Microsoft, Sun, BEA and others--to make this happen." January 8, 2003 - InfoWorld - OASIS seeks URI scheme to accommodate XML, Web services Analyst Ronald Schmelzer, of ZapThink in Boston, said in a prepared statement that industry support for XRI will be needed from major vendors such as IBM, Microsoft, BEA Systems, and Sun Microsystems. The WS-I (Web Services Interoperability Organization) also will need to support the XRI effort, Schmelzer said. "This might be an example of a great technology concept with major adoption challenges," Schmelzer said. As of press time, the four vendors had not yet responded to inquiries from Infoworld. January 6, 2003 - eWeek - Specs Upgrade Safety of Web Services These are initial versions of the specs, so customers still need to give their feedback," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, based in Cambridge, Mass. January 3, 2003 - TechRepublic - Ready your enterprise network for XML The difference in file sizes can be quite significant, according to experts. Web services consulting firm ZapThink LLC says that 1 GB of traditional database information could expand to as much as 20 GB when all of the XML coding and descriptors are added. January 2, 2003 - CRN - 5 Technologies to Watch Emerging companies such as Iona Technologies, Sonic Software and SpiritSoft are offering low-cost EAI software based on Web services standards. And research firms such as ZapThink are making eye-popping forecasts. ZapThink predicts the market for integrating systems using Web services will grow to about $6.2 billion in 2006 from $435 million in 2001. January 2003 - Web Services Journal - Putting Web Services into (Business) Context As ZapThink, LLC, an XML- and Web services–focused industry analyst group, explains, “Just because a new technology has promise doesn’t guarantee that it will be applied correctly.” December 30, 2002 - Internetnews.com - JP Morgan, IBM Finalize $5 Billion IT Deal "I think this [deal] is going to be their poster child for 'on demand'," said Ronald Schmelzer, a senior analyst with ZapThink, a tech research firm which specializes in XML and Web Services computing protocols. "On the positive side, it reflects the movement toward utility computing, even IT infrastructure as services, which started out as part of the ASP (define) trend" in the mid to late-1990s, he said. However, he added, as the tech giant sells more of these kinds of contracts, and ends up running critical infrastructure for more major companies, "is IBM really going to be able to scale up 'on demand' infrastructure, beyond simply bearing everybody's else's [IT] costs?" December 30, 2002 - TechTarget (SearchWebServices) - Experts predict advances in processes, SOAP; setback for WSDL Ronald Schmelzer Founder and senior analyst ZapThink Ronald's 2003 Predictions: 1.Web services are moving from promise to product to implementation 2. Web services security will go from nice-to-have to need-to-have 3. Management will become the new battleground 4. Politics will rear its ugly head in 2003 5. Finally, the WS-I will come of its own December 27, 2002 - Boston Business Journal - Curl gets $18M in VC, now must sell web technology Ron Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst for Zapthink in Waltham, added: "Ordinary people are struggling with what exactly they do. How is it different than ordinary web technology? It's a hard message to convey." December 24, 2002 - Internetnews.com - Sun Wins Injunction Against Microsoft in Java Case Despite what Sun poses as a major coup, one analyst isn't buying it. ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg, who covers the XML and Web services industry, told internetnews.com the ruling is little more than a Pyrrhic victory for Sun and that the battle lies elsewhere on the Web services front. "Sun has been trying to frame this battle as .NET vs. Java, and the judge has gone along with this perspective, but for Microsoft, the presence of the JVM on desktops has little effect on their plans for .NET. Sun apparently thinks that once desktops have the latest version of the JVM, then people will rush out to build Java-based Web Services. The fact of the matter is, desktop users (i.e., typical business users) aren't writing anything in Java. Business users run applications, and they don't really care what language or virtual machine they are running on top of. As business users begin to run Web Services on their desktops (a trend we see picking up in 2003), they will do so via their desktop applications." December 23, 2002 - Information Security Magazine - Advanced Web Services Specs Released Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at Web services industry analyst group ZapThink, describes the standards as the latest in a series of steps, with more to come. But he adds, "These are big companies still working together on standards that will have an impact, so when they release anything, it's important." Bloomberg says even though it's only an intermediate step, it's significant that a number of big companies are making progress on the lofty goal of setting standards for emerging technology. December 23, 2002 - ComputerWorld - Vendor Group Proposes New Set Of Web Services Specifications One of the questions facing IT managers is how long they must wait before they can really use Web services to guarantee interoperability in corporate and business-to-business applications, said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass. The new specifications fill in "more pieces of the puzzle," Bloomberg added. "The puzzle is not complete. But this is going to make it easier." December 2002 - CNet - Fact or fiction? The Web services industry gets real. "This has been a year where Web services moved from promise to product," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with market researcher ZapThink in Waltham, Mass. December 19, 2002 - InfoWorld - SOAP 1.2 spec takes next step An analyst said SOAP 1.2 differs from Version 1.1 in that it is not steered primarily by only Microsoft and IBM. "Although SOAP 1.2 involves a lot more players, if it wasn't for Microsoft and IBM, SOAP wouldn't be on the radar," said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, in Boston. A highlight of Version 1.2 is XML Schema support, Schmelzer said. December 19, 2002 - CW360 - Web services specifications will boost user confidence Analyst Jason Bloomberg of research firm ZapThink said the move would boost user confidence in launching Web services. The vendors driving the latest standards "are doing what they said they were going to do, and they are on track", he said. December 19, 2002 - IDG (Swedish) - Säkerhetsstandard klar för Web services Standarden är dock långt ifrån komplett och bland annat saknas bestämmelser för integritetsfrågor, enligt Jason Bloomberg, analytiker på ZapThink, som ändå anser att lanseringen är ett tecken på att leverantörerna vill enas kring Web services. December 19, 2002 - CNet - Sorting out the Web services tangle "This has been a year where Web services moved from promise to product," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with market researcher ZapThink in Waltham, Mass. December 18, 2002 - eWeek - IBM, Microsoft Deliver New Security Specs "These are initial versions of the specs, so customers still need to give their feedback," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, based in Cambridge, Mass. "There are no tools that support these specs yet, so today's announcement is only one in a series of steps that lead to the release of the specs to a standards body." December 18, 2002 - CNet - Web services specs focus on security "It's going to make Web services easier, so that companies are doing less nuts-and-bolts development and are able to take product off the shelf, enter their configuration, hit go and make it work," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink. "Now, if companies get into advanced applications that involves a sequence of steps in a business process and security, there's still a lot of guessing about the best way to do things." December 18, 2002 - Internetnews.com - IBM, Microsoft Publish Web Services Specs ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg said there are no new tools, as these are initial versions of the specs for customers to offer feedback. Nor have the specs found a home in a standards body yet, although Bloomberg said OASIS remains the favorite. However, Bloomberg noted that some of the details overlap with some of the aspects of the work done by the Liberty Alliance. He said that may be a sign that the Web Services Interoperability organization (WS-I) -- the umbrella organization under which Microsoft, IBM, and the others are developing their specifications -- may not be working with Liberty, despite the thaw in relations since Sun Microsystems (Quote, Company Info) -- which spearheaded Liberty's formation -- agreed to join WS-I. December 18, 2002 - InfoWorld - WS-Security specs make their debut Although he expressed surprise that WS-Security designers decided to delay addressing any sort of privacy as part of the first specification roll-out, Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst for Waltham, Mass.-based ZapThink, said Tuesday's announcement is nonetheless important due to the continued cooperation of major IT vendors to follow up promises of standardizing WS-Security. "Now customers get to review the specifications and give feedback and vendors have to build tools, so IBM and Microsoft will be rolling out [WS-Security] tools," said Bloomberg. "Once the standard moves along and [the] specification becomes a standard, then you'll find multiple vendors using WS-Security-compliant products. By no means do IBM and Microsoft have a lock on this." December 18, 2002 - Line56 - New Specs From WSSG Many analysts consider security the main obstacle to more widespread Web services implementation, so every new specification and product release helps. "The biggest development in Web services over the past several months is that new products are coming to market to support the standards that exist," observes analyst Jason Bloomberg of ZapThink. While Bloomberg feels positively about WSSG's unfolding road map, he raises questions about how it'll coexist with the Sun-sponsored Liberty Alliance. "It raises a red flag. The Liberty Alliance handles federated identity and security token independence, but that's also WSSG trust and secure conversation." Certainly, the potential for conflict is there, although Bloomberg adds that the Liberty Alliance and WSSG have open lines of communication, and a partly overlapping membership. December 18, 2002 - Application Development Trends - ZapThink: Big changes ahead in XML data storage The beginning of 2003 marks ''the end of the Native XML Data [NXD] store market as we know it,'' proclaimed Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, LLC, a Waltham, Mass.-based analyst firm specializing in XML. This does not mean that NXD vendors will disappear, although larger software companies may acquire some of the smaller ones; but the way XML data storage products are marketed and deployed will change, he said. December 18, 2002 - ComputerWorld - New set of Web services specifications unveiled "They are doing what they said they were going to do, and they are on track," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass. Bloomberg said that one of the questions facing IT managers is how long they should wait before they can really use Web services to guarantee interoperability in enterprise and business-to-business situations. He said the specifications released today are "some more pieces of the puzzle." "The puzzle is not complete," he said. "But this is going to make it easier." December 16, 2002 - Grid Today - SDSC CREATING GRID/WEB APPLICATION: PROVIDES E-MAIL ALERTS Service-oriented management products are crucial to the development of sophisticated Web services applications that go beyond internal integration projects, according to Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, the XML and Web services-focused industry analyst group. A recent ZapThink report predicted that the market for service-oriented management software will grow to $9.2 billion in the next five years. Bloomberg said start-ups such as Blue Titan -- which was founded in 2001 -- will soon face stiff competition from major vendors such as IBM, Hewlett- Packard and Computer Associates, all of which are planning to introduce Web services management products in the next two years. December 17, 2002 - Raining Data Press Release - Raining Data Announces the Developer Release of Its High-Performance TigerLogic XML Data Management Server on Windows 2000 and Windows XP Platforms "XML is increasingly proliferating and accelerating the deployment of dynamic, Java-based applications in such industries as health care, financial services, telecommunications, and higher education," said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, LLC. "This new breed of dynamic applications requires greater levels of performance, flexibility and extensibility when it comes to scaleable storage, indexing, and query of XML-enabled information and application metadata," added Schmelzer. December 17, 2002 - Internetnews.com - OASIS Converges on Translation, Localization ZapThink Senior Analyst Ron Schmelzer agreed and said this particular standard must be as open as possible. "Localization is definitely a "no-brainer" standardization activity to do with Web Services," Schmelzer told internetnews.com. "For products that work together, especially translation and formatting products, localization is the sort of activity that shouldn't be a proprietary operation." Schmelzer's colleague, fellow ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg, agreed. "The OASIS translation and localization technical committee aims to simplify and streamline the work of human translators more so than machine translation programs, and as such, breaks new ground in the development of standards-based workflow applications," Bloomberg told internetnews.com. "For those people who still see Web Services as being primarily for synchronous remote procedure call (RPC) applications, this move by OASIS should be a wakeup call that Web Services have a much broader applicability." December 17, 2002 - eContent - ZapThink Finds Native XML Data Storage Evolving The XML Data Store market no longer exists as a separate market, concludes a recently conducted major study of XML data store solutions by ZapThink, LLC, an analyst firm focused on XML and Web Services. The study, which covers XML data store vendors and XML-enabled relational database (RDBMS) vendors, finds that the XML data storage market currently consists of two segments: general-purpose XML data storage and purpose-built XML data storage. ZapThink concludes that RDBMS, content management, and integration vendors are best suited to offer general-purpose XML data store solutions, while XML data store pure-plays are offering increasingly focused, purpose-built XML data storage solutions. December 16, 2002 - eWeek - Sun Looks to BEA and WebLogic "What [Sun CEO Scott McNealy] either doesn't realize or won't admit is that the SunONE Application Server is of such poor quality that they're having trouble even giving it away," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC., Cambridge, Mass. December 16, 2002 - eWeek - Rational, IBM model a new world Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass. research company, said, "Rational has a great grasp on design-time modeling and business process representation. What Web Services and service-oriented architectures introduce is the notion of run-time modeling and run-time business process configuration. This is a new area, and Rational and IBM have yet to produce anything for this area... Maybe we can expect some serious progress in working to move UML and other modeling concepts closer to support the run-time nature of SOA/Web Services." December 16, 2002 - CRN - Seeing The Light This kind of "service-oriented" approach to systems integration,an alternative to merely seeking to build a better API,is what will drive the Web services opportunity for solution providers in the next few years, said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at research firm ZapThink. The service-oriented integration market is projected to skyrocket to $6.2 billion by 2006, from $435 million in 2001, according to ZapThink. Security, too, remains a big hurdle. Even with broad acceptance of the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) single sign-on standard, the lack of a definition for standard security frameworks is a stumbling block to Web services adoption, said ZapThink analyst Ronald Schmelzer. December 2002 - Application Development Trends - Web services report card As consultants Tony Baer and Ron Schmelzer point out in this month's cover story, The elements of Web services , many of the fundamental concepts of traditional IT practices like transaction services and security must be re-invented in a Web services world. And, of course, services that can be located anywhere on any network require new management techniques. In addition, Baer and Schmelzer note that despite much work, many important standards issues -- including who will be responsible for creating, overseeing and safeguarding the specifications -- remain mostly unresolved. December 13, 2002 - e-Business Standards Today - Study: native XML data store market changing The XML data store market no longer exists as a separate market, according to a recent study of XML data store solutions by ZapThink, LLC, an technology research firm. Zapthink says the study, which covers major pure-play XML data store vendors and XML-enabled relational database (RDBMS) vendors, finds that the XML data storage market currently consists of two segments: general-purpose XML data storage and purpose-built XML data storage. ZapThink concludes that RDBMS, content management, and integration vendors are best suited to offer general-purpose XML data store solutions, while XML data store pure-plays are offering increasingly focused, purpose-built XML data storage solutions. December 13, 2002 - Microsoft Watch - Another New Language On Tap From Microsoft? Microsoft may simply evolve some of the newer versions of .Net languages rather than introduce an entirely new language, speculated Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Waltham, Mass.-based research and analysis firm. "C, C++, Java, etc. are very much tied to the concept of objects, components, functions, etc.," Schmelzer said. "XML and Web Services don't have these notions, so these existing languages, or the newer versions of the .Net languages need to evolve to capture the data manipulation aspects of XML and Web Services rather than the object/compiled aspects." December 13, 2002 - Microsoft Watch (email) - XML Beyond XDocs ZapThink's senior analyst Ron Schmelzer offered his two cents: Paoli "understands that XML is a new beast that can help companies manage data better, since it associates metadata (context) with information. This will probably be increasingly reflected in Microsoft's products, and the Office 11 and XDocs initiatives are clear that document-oriented, metadata-oriented, and content-oriented applications are increasingly becoming core to Microsoft's product set." December 13, 2002 - Internetnews.com - Analyze This, Rationalize That! Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst of XML and Web services research firm ZapThink, doesn't see Microsoft making a big deal about the issue, noting that IBM and Microsoft support each other in many ways. "IBM will clearly take full advantage of XDE for WebSphere, while XDE for .NET's future is somewhat up in the air," Bloomberg said. "My prediction is that IBM will continue to fully support it -- after all, many IBM customers also have .NET, and IBM is committed to interoperability in heterogeneous environments." December 13, 2002 - Internetnews.com - ZapThink: Native XML Data Storage Will Evolve nalysts at XML and Web services consultancy ZapThink Friday made the prediction that the native XML database (NXD) niche no longer exists as a separate market. ZapThink Senior Analyst Ron Schmelzer told internetnews.com XML-enabled relational database (RDBMS), content management, and integration vendors are best suited to offer general-purpose XML data store solutions, while XML database pure-plays are offering more focused XML data storage solutions. Schmelzer believes XML database features will eventually become incorporated in an increasing number of major software packages, including those offered by Microsoft, Oracle and IBM. December 11, 2002 - Westbridge Press Release - Westbridge Technology and nCipher Integrate Hardware and Software Solutions For Comprehensive, Wire Speed XML Web Services Security Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst at ZapThink, said, “nCipher’s focus on cryptography and key management complements the capabilities of Westbridge Technology’s XML Message Server quite well. nCipher offers high scalability, cryptographic security, and key management capabilities across multiple hardware platforms, while Westbridge brings robust policy-based access control, XML encryption, and malicious attack prevention to the table. The combination promises to offer enterprises bulletproof security at wire speed.” December 11, 2002 - ITsecurity.com - Reactivity and nCipher Team to Secure Web Services "The proliferation of Web services is driving demand for complete security solutions that eliminate the need to integrate point products from multiple vendors,” said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. “Today’s announcement is a significant step in the right direction, combining best-of-breed technologies financial institutions and others can quickly deploy to get their Web services applications to market with the security they require.” December 10, 2002 - Internetnews.com - W3C Proposes XML Encryption, Decryption Specs "Web Services offer great potential for business-to-business communication and integration," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. "But the lack of robust security and management solutions currently inhibit the ability for companies to conduct business with each other via Web Services over the Internet. You can't just buy a little security. You have to cover all the bases to be secure." Bloomberg told internetnews.com the XML Encryption standard is one of the "lynchpins of XML and Web Services security." December 10, 2002 - Canada IT.com - Corel Corporation Introduces Corel(R) XMetaL(R) 4 at XML 2002 "Corel has long been a leader in the development of solutions for structured and unstructured content," says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, LLC. "What XMetaL 4.0 brings to the table is a very flexible, complete, and robust product for developing XML-based solutions that can be used by line-of-business users as well as experienced editors and developers. Corel clearly sees the vision that XML will become pervasive in the enterprise in the near future." December 10, 2002 - DataWatch Press Release - Datawatch's New VorteXML Server Speeds Adoption of XML for Web Services, Legacy Transformation and Bill Presentment Applications "XML promises to provide enterprises significant return on investment, but it is critical to realize that the initial investment required to put existing content into XML has been a major barrier to adoption," said ZapThink Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer. "Companies must therefore find a way to lower the cost of XML creation. Datawatch's VorteXML lowers this cost and time investment required by providing an automated approach to converting legacy content into XML, thus enabling enterprises to realize the full benefits of solutions across the content lifecycle." December 10, 2002 - nCipher Press Release - nCipher First Hardware Security Vendor to Deliver Enhanced Security and Performance to Secure Web Services "nCipher is clearly filling a critical gap in the continued adoption of Web Services," says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, LLC. "Security is the most immediate and largest barrier to widespread adoption of Web Services. While there are many solutions and technologies emerging for solving pieces of the security puzzle, there is a definite need for a high performance, robust, and reliable security infrastructure to enable these higher level solutions." December 10, 2002 - Reactivity Press Release - Reactivity and nCipher Team to Secure Web Services "The proliferation of Web services is driving demand for complete security solutions that eliminate the need to integrate point products from multiple vendors," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. "Today's announcement is a significant step in the right direction, combining best-of-breed technologies financial institutions and others can quickly deploy to get their Web services applications to market with the security they require." December 9, 2002 - InternetWeek.com - New Distributed Computing Model Takes On SOAP, Web Services "It's fairly simple," Ronald Schmelzer, analyst for IT research firm ZapThink LLC, said. "You can do some robust things with it, and it doesn't have the layers of complexity that Web services protocols have." "The discussions are really debates about Web services for the people vs. Web services for businesses," Schmelzer said. "There are a lot of open-source people behind REST and a lot of vendor stuff behind Web services. It's very religious." December 6, 2002 - Application Development Trends - Web services supercomputing coming of age Service-oriented management products are crucial to the development of sophisticated Web services applications that go beyond internal integration projects, according to Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, the XML and Web services-focused industry analyst group. A recent ZapThink report (http://www.zapthink.com) predicted that the market for service-oriented management software will grow to $9.2 billion in the next five years. Bloomberg said start-ups such as Blue Titan -- which was founded in 2001 -- will soon face stiff competition from major vendors such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Computer Associates, all of which are planning to introduce Web services management products in the next two years. December 6, 2002 - Internetnews.com - IBM to Buy Rational Software for $2.1 Billion ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg, whose firm analyzes Web services and XML trends, said the deal makes a lot of sense for all parties involved -- IBM, Rational, customers and partners. Bloomberg, who was recently briefed by Rational on its Web services strategy, said Rational's one glaring weakness is their lack of robust runtime support tools. Not anymore, now that it has paired with IBM. "ZapThink believes that the division between the design time and runtime worlds will blur in the Service-oriented world, so this hole could have been a big problem for Rational with their pure design time focus," Bloomberg said. "Now that Rational and Tivoli are under the same umbrella, there is the possibility that IBM can fill this hole and give companies like Mercury Interactive and Compuware an even bigger run for their money -- but we'll have to see if they will be able to effectively execute on this combination of capabilities from different software divisions." December 4, 2002 - Week.it (Italian) - Web service: Rest è lo sfidante di Soap Jason Bloomberg, analista di Zap Think (società di consulenza specializzata in Web service), ha efficacemente sintetizzato il tutto: «Penso che l'argomento sia interessante e in grado di suscitare polemiche, perché è una contrapposizione tra il punto di vista di chi pensa che “i web services sono per le persone” e chi, invece, sostiene “i web services per le aziende”». «La diatriba si può anche ridurre a quale sia il migliore strumento di lavoro», continua Bloomberg: «Rest è più semplice, ma meno potente di Soap; se l'obiettivo è la semplicità, è meglio scegliere Rest. Ma per alcune applicazioni Soap si rivela più appropriato». December 2, 2002 - Internetnews.com - OASIS Stamps Approval on ebXML CPPA Not all analysts harbor the same optimism for ebXML, however. If ebXML's function sounds a lot like Web services, it's because it's true. That is one of the reasons why ZapThink Senior Analyst Ron Schmelzer told internetnews.com many industry analysts are skeptical as to how readily ebXML will be adopted. While Sun and major players are backing it, Schmelzer said Microsoft and IBM prefer to support Web services standards, which are more general in nature, to the B2B-oriented ebXML protocol. That said, Schmelzer said "a lot of us analysts think ebXML will find its way in the Web services arena" but how that might happen is unclear. December 2, 2002 - Integration Developer News - A 2003 Roadmap for Web Services Testing In his report Testing Web Services, ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg predicted, "Over the next five years or so, web services herald a shift in distributed computing toward loosely coupled, standards-based, Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA)." This next generation of web services, Bloomberg added, "promises to fundamentally change the distributed computing landscape [and] present new testing scenarios and problems that companies using web services don't currently understand." December 2, 2002 - Transact - Web services management market expected to grow A recent report entitled "Service-Oriented Management: How Web Services are the Key to the Service-Oriented Architecture" published by ZapThink indicates the potential for significant growth in the Web services management market. The company predicts that the market will increase from $30 million in 2002 to $9.2 billion by 2007. December 2002 - Application Development Trends - The elements of Web services Article By Tony Baer, Ron Schmelzer: What technologies support Web services and what is ready for prime time? The answers can be confusing. Like any new technology, most of the current action surrounding Web services is just talk and experimentation. The basic building blocks have been laid, but questions abound about what additional pieces need to fall into place. December 1, 2002 - 01 Informatique (French) - Les produits de sécurisation des services web arrivent Il encapsule tout type d'information structurée et représente 2 % du trafic internet à l'heure actuelle, mais devrait monter à 25 % en 2006, selon le cabinet d'analystes ZapThink. November 26, 2002 - 01Net.it (Italian) - Arriva Rest, rivale di Soap Jason Bloomberg, analista di Zapthink Lss, ha chiarito che Rest è molto più semplice da utilizzare di Soap che, parimenti, risulta tuttavia meno potente ed è, quindi, applicabile solo in alcuni casi. Soap, per contro, si rivela la soluzione più utile nella maggior parte dei contesti applicativi. November 25, 2002 - eWeek - SOAP Faces a New Challenger "I believe the emotions surrounding this issue run so high because it is a key battleground in the 'Web services are for people' versus 'Web services are for companies' debate," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass. "It boils down to a matter of the best tool for the job," Bloomberg said. "REST is simpler but less powerful than SOAP, so if REST will do, then go for it. But for some tasks, SOAP is more appropriate." November 23, 2002 - BP BizTech (Japanese) - 2007年のWebサービス管理市場、現在の約300倍の92億ドル規模へ--米調査 米ZapThink, LLCは米国時間11月19日に、Webサービス管理市場の今後の展望について調査した結果を発表した。それによると、Webサービス管理市場は2002年の3000万ドル規模から、2007年には92億ドル規模へと急成長を遂げる。 　Webサービス管理は、Webサービスの普及においてセキュリティに次ぐ課題である。従来のシステム管理の範ちゅうを越えたWebサービス管理によって、サービス志向のアーキテクチャを構築することが可能になる。 November 21, 2002 - Internetnews.com - Microsoft's Battle Lines Shifting to Office? "Microsoft sees Office as the "ultimate" rich client for XML and Web Services on the desktop, and they're right," said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with XML and Web services research firm ZapThink. "They are going to be turning Office 11 into more than just a suite of office applications, but into a productivity center that most people can run their daily operations off of. Excel, Outlook, Word, and PowerPoint serve the basis for most individual's daily tasks in any case." Fellow ZapThink Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg added that without Microsoft's cooperation, the OASIS technical committee may just be blowing in the wind. "The big question is whether Microsoft not being a member of the Open Office XML Format Technical Committee makes the whole affair a moot point -- after all with 90+ percent of the office app market, a standards effort without Microsoft looks pretty silly on the face of it," he said. "However, Microsoft is committed to supporting the core XML standards, including XSD 1.0 (XML Schema Definition), so if the work OASIS does in this committee is compatible with XSD 1.0, then Microsoft Office will, at least in theory, conform to the new Open Office standard. November 21, 2002 - Comdex Daily - Great Debates ask: .NET or .What? Schmelzer asked for audience participation at the beginning of his remarks. "How many people here drink beer" he asked, drawing a big affirmative response. "How many people like money?" He then queried: "How many people here trust Microsoft?" Far fewer hands went up. November 21, 2002 - TechTarget - .NET fans, foes duke it out at Comdex During the debate-style event, the anti-.NET team, featuring Sun Microsystems Inc.'s director of Java and Web services, Mark Herring, and ZapThink's founder and senior analyst, Ronald Schmelzer, exchanged verbal jabs with Don Jones, the founding partner of BrainCore.Net LLC, and Paul Kimmel, the president of Software Conceptions Inc. Schmelzer countered by focusing on Microsoft's weak track record on security and its many patches, even insinuating that Microsoft picked February to be its security focus month "because it's the shortest month of the year." He also said the company has adopted a "razor blade method of selling software" by using its controversial software licensing program to force customers into paying for new products that they may never need. November 21, 2002 - IT Web (Brazil) - Gerenciamento é nova onda dos Web services A ZapThink indica que a tecnologia procede a segurança nos quesitos fundamentais para a consolidação desta tecnologia Enquanto as empresas superam as barreiras impostas pela segurança para tonar possível a larga adoção de Web services, a ZapThink aponta o gerenciamento da tecnologia como a nova onda para ingressar no segmento. Como explica Jason Bloomberg, analista sênior da ZapThink, as soluções de gerenciamento são a ponte entre os Web services e a tecnologia que os suporta. November 20, 2002 - Application Development Trends - Service-oriented management boosts Web services The emergence of Service-oriented Management software will lead the rapid growth of Web services management products, which will reach $9.2 billion in the next five years, predicts ZapThink LLC., a Waltham, Mass.-based consulting firm. Small vendors are rushing to build such products in advance of major suppliers, which are expected to dominate Web services management by 2005, according to a ZapThink report released this week. November 19, 2002 - Internetnews.com - Management May Be Next Battleground for Web Services As companies push past the barriers that security concerns have placed before Web services adoption, XML and Web services research firm ZapThink predicts Web services management technology will be the next roadblock -- and the next opportunity -- for companies competing in the Web services arena. "Web services management solutions bridge the gap between Web services and the underlying technology that they run on," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink and author of the report Service-Oriented Management: How Web Services Management is the Key to the Service-Oriented Architecture. November 19, 2002 - Internet Addict - L'avenir des Web Services Les technologies et standards de gestion devraient permettre de booster le marché des Web Services, et rapporter 9,2 milliards $ en 2007. Selon une étude de ZapThink, le marché des Web Services, estimé à 30 millions $, devrait prendre son envol grâce à l'adoption des sociétés de plus de standards et technologies pour les aider à être compétitives. "Des solutions de gestion des Web Services constituent le lien entre les services web et la technologie sur laquelle ils se basent", a déclaré l'analyste Jason Bloomberg. November 18, 2002 - CNet - W3C sees graphics on mobile phones "XHTML has the same modular structure, which should be good from an adoption point of view," said Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink, a research firm that focuses on XML and Web services. "But XHTML modules haven't been adopted that much." Schmelzer said SVG fit right into Adobe's larger goal to provide content-rendering technologies that render similarly on various platforms. "For Adobe, this is like the way that PDF allowed universal representation of documents," Schmelzer said. "With vector graphics, the images will always render consistently." November 18, 2002 - CNet - For W3C, it's a question of semantics "It has been a challenge for the AI people forever to get the computer to understand meaning," said Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink, a research firm that focuses on XML (Extensible Markup Language) and Web services. The W3C "is going after that same problem. This is something that's five to 10 years off. I don't want to be pessimistic, but it's going to take more than academics and the W3C to do this. It needs to be driven by industry and to be more focused on developing something specifically for commerce." November 18, 2002 - Line56 - Web Services Management Research company ZapThink will release a new report, entitled "Service-Oriented Management: How Web Services are the Key to the Service-Oriented Architecture," tomorrow. The report's key finding is that proper management of Web services is a necessary precursor to the service-oriented architecture increasingly being adopted by forward-thinking enterprises. Standalone Web services management might not have a rosy future, opines analyst Jason Bloomberg of ZapThink. "Who's going to buy Web services management until you have lots of Web services running? That's why vendors are using it to manage middleware and legacy systems as well." November 18, 2002 - InfoWorld - Web services management to soar, report says MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGIES AND standards will be key to igniting the Web services market, and are set to reap vendors some $9.2 billion by 2007, according to a new report released by ZapThink. The Waltham, Mass.-based researcher predicted that the current $30 million Web services management market will balloon as businesses adopt more standards and technologies to help them compete. " Web services management solutions bridge the gap between Web services and the underlying technology that they run on," ZapThink senior analyst Jason Bloomberg said in a statement. November 18, 2002 - Integration Developer News - SOAP Poised for "Clean" Royalty-Free Bill of Health "I don't know if even webMethods knows what they want here," Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at Zapthink, a web services consulting firm based in Waltham, Mass., told IDN. "The question is really whether a company like web Methods can really obstruct SOAP 1.2. And, I think it's a chess move, for the most part," Bloomberg added. "There's no question after more than a year working on this that the W3C would expect webMethods to play ball, and I have a feeling they'll come around. The worst thing that may happen is that this will slow things down a bit. I don't see a headline in March that says 'SOAP Goes Down the Tubes,'" Bloomberg added. November 2002 - ABA Banking Online - e-BIZ Online Companion Dialogue Ron Schmelzer , a senior analyst with Zapthink, Waltham, Mass., focuses on technical and business aspects of the emerging web services area. Printed here, is an edited version of an email-based Q&A conducted as part of my efforts to climb the web services learning curve. We, at ABA Banking Journal, were so taken with the clarity of his responses, that we thought you might find it useful as well. November 2002 - Open Enterprise Trends - Web Services Testing Beyond SOAP: Brace for Changes Today, developers or sysadmins looking for web services testing tools need search no further than simple RPC and/or XML support in current testing products (depending on whether they are for the network or application layer). But a recent report on web services testing from ZapThink -- covering techniques, tools and standards -- predicts an explosion in divergent web services testing tools and methodologies, starting as early as the coming New Year. In his report Testing Web Services, ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg predicted, "Over the next five years or so, web services herald a shift in distributed computing toward loosely coupled, standards-based, Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA)." This next generation of web services, Bloomberg added, "promises to fundamentally change the distributed computing landscape [and] present new testing scenarios and problems that companies using web services don't currently understand." November 2002 - Open Enterprise Trends - Royalty Free SOAP Close to a Reality Despite webMethods' perceived hard line, analysts don't see a clear winning strategy for the company. "I don't know if even webMethods knows what they want here," Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at ZapThink, a web services consulting firm based in Waltham, Mass., told OET. "The question is really whether a company like webMethods can really obstruct SOAP 1.2. And, I think it's a chess move, for the most part," Bloomberg added. "There's no question after more than a year working on this that the W3C would expect webMethods to play ball, and I have a feeling they'll come around. The worst thing that may happen is that this will slow things down a bit. I don't see a headline in March that says 'SOAP Goes Down the Tubes.'". November 12, 2002 - CNET (News.com) - W3C recommends online forms standard "There are problems with (the current) approach. The way the form looks and the information it gathers are linked together, so you can't change easily for Pocket PC or if you want to use it in Japan, for instance," said Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink, a research firm that focuses on XML and Web services. November 12, 2002 - Bio-IT World - Giving XML Special Treatment This makes XML data quite different from traditional data stored in common relational database management systems. For example, 1GB of traditional database information might expand to as much as 20GB when XML descriptions and coding are applied, according to the XML and Web services research firm ZapThink LLC. November 11, 2002 - eWeek - HP Sharpens Web Services "OpenView now forms the core of the HP software strategy as a whole," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., market research company. "They have pretty much relinquished the middleware and application markets to others that they will partner with and are focusing on management of these resources on the network." November 8, 2002 - Internetnews.com - SOAP 1.2 Passage Snagged By IP Issues Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst for XML and Web services research firm Zapthink, doesn't think the companies are out to stymie the standard -- just a little power posturing. "In my opinion, any company in Epicentric's and webMethod's position would realize that asserting an IP claim on part of a proposed standard will prevent that particular IP from making its way into the standard. If that IP is critical to the development of the standard, then the standard might be stymied. If not, then the standards body would have to find another approach to solving the particular issue. In either case, nobody would pay that vendor any licensing fees so that they could use the standard. Since it's not in the vendor's best interests to stymie the standard, and there's no revenue to be gained by deflecting the standard body, then why would a vendor actually take such an action? " November 2002 - Le Monde Informatique (French) - "La catégory native n'existe plus" Ronald Schmelzer, analyste de ZapThink, auteur du rapport "XML Data Storage Technologies and Trends". Les éditeurs de bases de données relationnnelles (SGBDR) prétendent avoir déployé de tels efforts dans la prise en compte de XML que le recours à des bases natives (NXD) deviendrait superflu... November 4, 2002 - ComputerWorld - Beyond Cool: Cheaper, easier-to-use PDAs tackle real work at efficiency- and cost-conscious companies. Instead of the entire PDA application having to reside on the device, XML enables a big chunk of it to be offloaded to a larger system. "With XML and Web services, it's much easier to use these devices for more serious business applications - you don't have to have the whole application running on the device anymore," explains Ronald Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink LLC, an XML and Web services research company in Waltham, Mass. November 4, 2002 - Infoconomy - The missing link Web services analysts such as Jason Bloomberg, of US-based ZapThink, have even suggested that the solution lies in 'extreme programming', a collaborative programming method that simultaneously deals with design, testing, deployment and management of programs. "The vision between design and run time is going to blur as companies start to release web services. For example, if you are dynamically discovering web services components, you can't know what components are being used in the design stage, so you have to do testing while in production. Testing overlaps with management," says Bloomberg. November 2002 - e-Commerce Magazin (German) - Neue Technologie am Start German text available in print magazine only. November 1, 2002 - ZDNet - Muckraking for SOAP traffic You want to know what's traveling over your network, says [Jason] Bloomberg, senior analyst for research firm ZapThink. "Unauthorized traffic is just one step below malicious traffic," he adds. "If it's unauthorized, it could be accidental. But if you don't even know that there's a lot of SOAP traffic on your network, you won't even know there's a problem." While you may be tempted to push this kind of thing onto the back burner, because Web services are still the domain of programmers and fall under IT's control, Bloomberg advises against such short-sighted apathy. In the next version of Microsoft Office, he says, anybody with an Excel spreadsheet can publish or consume a Web service; that is, they can make information in the spreadsheet available to anyone across the network who either updates a particular cell or requests an update from a particular cell. November 1, 2002 - ZDNet - Web services: Look before you leap Without such a blueprint, budding Web services projects are doomed to produce more poorly thought-out software that is just as unmaintainable as what already exists in the organization, only running on a yet another technical infrastructure. As the analyst firm ZapThink, LLC recently put it; "just because a new technology has promise doesn't guarantee that it will be applied correctly." November 1, 2002 - Internetnews.com - Adding SALT to the Mix Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at Massachusetts-based ZapThink, thinks the idea of merging the two standards together is a good proposition for developers. "It would be a good idea for SALT to incorporate with VXML, then you don't have to force people to follow two different specs," he said. But Schmelzer doesn't see the two combining in the near future, however, because the two standards are only superficially alike. This could create problems down the road. "It's not a matter of building applications that comply with two different XML documents, it's following the directions of two different standards that's the hard part," he said. "Microsoft and the other groups that created SALT probably didn't think it would impact VXML because they were coming at it from a different perspective; they're just trying to get speech into and out of applications." November 1, 2002 - ZDNet - The role of XML in content management: addressing the need for information sharing. The data inside a corporation doubles every six to eight months, according to META Group. As a result, content management systems (CMSs) have become a critical component of organizations' IT infrastructures, managing all enterprise content for a variety of applications. In the past, exchanging information between content repositories and data-oriented applications within and across organizations was extremely difficult, as many of these systems are incompatible with one another. (Archived) November 2002 - XML Journal - The Role of XML in Content Management According to ZapThink, the market for XML data storage technologies will grow to more than $4.1 Billion by 2005. October 31, 2002 - Business Computer News (Japanese) - ザップシンク　ロナルド・シュメルツァー シニアアナリスト 米調査会社のZapThink（ザップシンク）は、XMLおよびウェブサービスのセキュリティ市場規模が2006年にワールドワイドで44億ドル規模になることを予測した。ウェブサービステクノロジーが普及するためには、セキュリティの脆弱さが最大の障壁となっており、ウェブ関連のセキュリティ市場には多くの新興企業が参入するとみている。 October 30, 2002 - Jaring Internet Magazine (Malaysia) - Protect your IT systems from security breaches In June, ZapThink (www.zapthink.com), the XML and web services research firm projected the web security services market would expand to US$4.4 billion worldwide by 2006. October 29, 2002 - Application Development Trends - Siebel leaps on .NET bandwagon One question the alliance raises, said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink (http://www.zapthink.com), is ''Where is the Web services story? What we find interesting in the last few weeks is that Microsoft is moving away from the '.NET is for interoperability story'; this story is that Siebel will run on .NET.'' The message they are sending, Bloomberg said, is that ''if you want to do Siebel, you really should do it on .NET.'' October 29, 2002 - ZDNet - The horror of XML According to ZapThink senior analyst Ronald Schmelzer, the bigger question is, when is it acceptable to compromise interoperability for efficiency reasons? This happens when programmers rewrite the XML parser (as indeed they can, since there are many open source parsers) to ignore certain standard aspects of the language, thereby speeding up the parsing process. October 28, 2002 - NetworkWorld - Safe SOAP According to Zapthink (http://www.zapthink.com/), a consulting and analysis company, this will create a market for XML and Web services security gear worth $4.4 billion in 2006, compared to just $40 million in 2001. October 23, 2002 - Interwoven Press Release - GearUp 2002 Annual User Conference to Highlight Real World Success With Interwoven Enterprise Content Management ZapThink will highlight how ECM implementations are maximizing ROI. October 22, 2002 - ServerWatch - Westbridge Technology Offers Free "Sniff" Tool "Because Web Services pass through traditional firewalls, many enterprises are unaware of the sensitive data that may be flowing on their networks," said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst at ZapThink. "As Web Services become more prevalent on the desktop, the problem of unauthorized or sensitive SOAP traffic on the network will only get worse." October 21, 2002 - eWeek - XML Increases Options for Services, Integration "IBM clearly sees that WebSphere must move up what we call the 'integration zipper,' moving from the application server/ API level ... to the business process level in order to offer products that can come with any kind of meaningful margin," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass. October 21, 2002 - Integration Developer News - Scaling XML to High-Volume -- Dos and Don'ts "Developers need to start their planning from the basic assumption that XML is inefficient. If developers don't spend time thinking clearly about what that means to their systems environment they could run into challenges," Zapthink analyst Ronald Schmelzer told Integration Developer News. The problem with scaling XML, Schmelzer said, is that it's difficult to determine just where the inefficiencies will crop up. Because many XML projects are low- and medium-volume projects designed to be small pilot tests, he said, "at first, often these XML inefficiencies don't really show up." October 21, 2002 - SunFlash Newsletter - Westbridge Tool Detects Unauthorized XML Web Services Traffic "Because Web Services pass through traditional firewalls, many enterprises are unaware of the sensitive data that may be flowing on their networks. As Web Services become more prevalent on the desktop, the problem of unauthorized or sensitive SOAP traffic on the network will only get worse," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. October 21, 2002 - Westbridge Press Release - Westbridge Technology Offers Free Tool to 'Sniff' Unauthorized XML Web Services Traffic on Corporate Networks "Because Web Services pass through traditional firewalls, many enterprises are unaware of the sensitive data that may be flowing on their networks. As Web Services become more prevalent on the desktop, the problem of unauthorized or sensitive SOAP traffic on the network will only get worse," said Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst at ZapThink. October 18, 2002 - atmark IT (Japanese) - Webサービス専門の調査会社が説く、その活用法とは？ 「Webサービスを用いた『サービス指向インテグレーション』は、ビジネスで求められるシステム統合に、機能的にもコスト的にも非常に適したアーキテクチャだ。ただし、セキュリティ、マネジメント、トランザクションの3つが実現への障害として横たわっている」。米Zapthinkのロナルド・シュメルツアー（Ronald Schmelzer）氏とジェイソン・ブルームバーグ（Jason Bloomberg）氏は、10月17日にビーコンITが実施した「XML & Web Services Road Show第2弾！」で、Webサービスの活用と動向についてプレゼンテーションを行った。 October 18, 2002 - Business Computer News (Japanese) - BCN、XML Webサービス調査の米ZapThink社と提携、邦訳リポートを販売へ 　今回の業務提携によりBCN Global Researchは、ZapThink社のXML Webサービスに関する情報提供サービスを幅広く提供していく。まずは、邦訳リポートとして、「Data Storage」、「Security」、「XML in Financial Services」のトピックから提供を開始し、新規リポートについては逐次、リアルタイムに提供していく。なお、英文リポートはすでに販売を開始している。 October 18, 2002 - Smart News (Romanian) - Firewall-urile XML - solutia optima pentru protejarea serviciilor web In prezent, exista doua tipuri de firewall-uri XML - cele bazate pe hardware si cele bazate pe software. Conform Jason Bloomberg, analist la ZapThink, cele doua tipuri functioneaza in mod identic. Totusi, "firewall-urile XML bazate pe hardware au ca avantaje viteza si manevrabilitatea. Prin urmare, acestea sunt si mai costisitoare." Conform afirmatiilor lui Bloomberg, firewall-urile XML sunt, de fapt, un subset al proxy-urilor XML, care, pe langa securitate, furnizeaza si alte servicii (de exemplu, transformare sau accelerare XML). Prin urmare, in cele mai multe cazuri, cei interesati de un firewall XML vor obtine protectia firewall ca parte a unui server proxy XML. October 17, 2002 - CNet - XML spec moves ahead despite gripes One analyst said that although concerns about undue influence by individual vendors were valid, there was a legitimate reason to support the IBM-specific change. "The truth is that there are a lot of IBM mainframe systems out there, and they're very important," said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink. "The truth is that this is not really for IBM's benefit, it's for IBM's customers' benefit. And I think that's fair. An international standard shouldn't change for the benefit of a company's future project, but it's clear that end-of-line characters are not a strategic business strategy for IBM." October 16, 2002 - Line56 - Web Services Security as Shared Service Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, another Web services researcher, agrees that Netegrity's strength in building strategic partnerships gives the company an edge. Of course, technology companies Entrust and Baltimore Technologies are also vying for the pole position in the Web services security platform race. Moreover, enterprise security isn't a simple software fix, warns Bloomberg. "There's many aspects, from physical security to employee training, that companies need to address," he says. "You can lock 19 of 20 doors but that's not going to keep you safe." October 2002 - The Rational Edge - Testing Web Services Today and Tomorrow To understand the issues facing Web Services testing from now into the future, it is important to understand the current spectrum of testing techniques and how they apply to Web Services -- what might be called the "first dimension" of Web Services testing. The second dimension takes us into the future, as enterprises move beyond today's simple applications of Web Services to a broad, Service-oriented environment that contains large numbers of dynamically described and discovered Services. Combining these two dimensions of Web Services testing with a roadmap that lays out the enterprise adoption of Web Services over the next few years provides a clear picture of how the area of Web Services testing should develop over time. October 15, 2002 - Light Reading - Sarvega Accelerates XML “Sarvega is a startup,” asserts Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink LLC. “Their biggest challenge is getting adoption in the market. They should be looking at partnerships.” While some observers question how long it will be before features for securing XML are integrated into more traditional security appliances in the network, ZapThink's Schmelzer says he expects people will opt for a separate appliance. “With traditional firewalls, XML passes through them like a hot knife through butter,” he says. October 2002 - ComputerWorld Chile - Microsoft Corteja a los Leales a Visual Basic (Spanish, Translation of InfoWorld article) “Microsoft tiene motivo para preocuparse de lo que pensarán los desarrolladores VB acerca de mudarse a Java”, estima Jason Bloomberg, consultor analista de ZapThink Research, compañía de investigación de mercado de Massachusetts, que se especializa en XML y en servicios Web. October 15, 2002 - LogicLibrary Press Release - LogicLibrary Survey Reveals Enterprise Needs in Web Services Development According to ZapThink, LLC, an analyst firm focused on XML and Web Services, a centralized catalog mapped to business architectures and processes will be critical to Web services development, as it helps companies save money and time. "Part of the challenge of building robust, scalable, reliable, and mission-critical applications is locating and categorizing those services that are important to a particular business process," says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, LLC. "Systems are becoming increasingly complex sets of functionality drawn from many different systems in the enterprise. Organizations need a better grasp of what critical functionality they can use in order to take advantage of Web services' benefits." October 14, 2002 - Internetnews.com - Sticky Strands of Web Services Uncertainty ZapThink analysts Jason Bloomberg and Ronald Schmelzer took a stab at interpreting and extrapolating on the Evans Data for internetnews.com. Neither is sure that choice of platform is a major issue. Bloomberg told internetnews.com the choice of a platform gradually fade in importance as Web services evolve to be full, "coarse-grained" business services. "Software development isn't going away, to be sure, but the choice of platform or language will become more of a "right tool for the job" question, where developers will pick and choose whatever language is appropriate for the task at hand," Bloomberg said. "In fact, the Evans data hints at this -- after all, with the two key numbers both well over 50%, the number of developers who are planning on using both .NET and J2EE must also be going up quite rapidly. And why is that? Partly because they want to use the right tool for the job." Fellow analyst Schmelzer takes the concept further. Schmelzer said the survey indicates that developers are confused and, more interestingly, he theorized that .NET could eventually cannibalize (eek!) Java. "With 63% of developers planning to implement .NET and 61% of developers planning to implement Java, we can notice that there is an increasing trend towards overlapping development. Basically, Microsoft has done an excellent job of telling developers that they can develop on top of .NET in *addition* to developing on top of Java. Why rip and replace when you can "embrace and extend"? October 11, 2002 - InfoWorld - Web services lockdown "Passwords only get you so far. To take that extra step, whether it's a PKI token or Kerberos ticket or a smart card, a lot of companies need to make that move for business requirements for [ Web services] security," said Jason Bloomberg, a security analyst at ZapThink, a Boston-based Web services research company. October 8, 2002 - TechTarget - XML Firewalls There are generally two types of XML firewalls – those that are hardware-based, and those that are software-based. According to Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst at ZapThink, the two work similarly, except that "hardware XML firewalls have the advantages of speed and manageability." As a rule, though, they cost more as well. Bloomberg notes that XML firewalls are actually a subset of XML proxies, which provide other services in addition to security, such as XML transformation or acceleration. So in many instances, someone interested in an XML firewall will get firewall protection as part of an overall XML proxy server. While vendors continue to enter the market, the number of paying customers right now is limited. "It's just getting started," Bloomberg says. "Companies are just rolling out products. There are a few early customers, but not a significant market for it today. It will get big in the future, but it might not be a separate market in the long run – the traditional firewall market will incorporate a lot of it." October 8, 2002 - InfoWorld - RSA and Entrust target Web services security returns According to Jason Bloomberg, security analyst at Boston-based Web services research firm ZapThink, the comprehensive "wealth of experience" in PKI, digital certificates, and ID management technology from vendors such as Entrust, RSA, and Baltimore Technologies should prove an immediate boost in the cramped market to secure Web services. "There are a lot of pieces to a PKI solution -- certificates, management, revocation, and tying each of those in with user management. Web services will help that," said Bloomberg. "Passwords only get you so far. To take that extra step, whether it's a PKI token or Kerberos ticket, or a token like a smart card, a lot of companies need to make that move for business requirements for [ Web services] security." October 8, 2002 - CNet (News.com) - Perspective: XML's ticking time bomb Now is the time to begin controlling XML, because it is on a serious roll. Spending on XML-related technologies and Web services by financial services companies is projected to reach $985 million in 2002 and grow to $8.3 billion by 2005, according to ZapThink, an XML and Web services research and analysis firm. October 7, 2002 - Internetnews.com - Verisign, IBM Web Services Security Pact Bears Fruit "Web Services offer great potential for business-to-business communication and integration," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at Web services research firm ZapThink. "But the lack of robust security and management solutions currently inhibit the ability for companies to conduct business with each other via Web Services over the Internet. You can't just buy a little security. You have to cover all the bases to be secure." Zapthink's Ronald Schmelzer noted that the play was evidence that technology firms are not simply sitting idly by, waiting for standards to be hashed out. "The MQ Series-Tivoli-Verisign solution is an example of an increasing number of vendors joining up to solve hard security, management, transaction, and reliability problems rather than waiting for the standards to be solidified," Schmelzer said. "If anything, it helps illustrate why vendors are pushing for solutions much faster than the standards bodies can deliver. This might lead to conflicting standards and solutions in the long-haul, but at least in the short term, Web Services can live up to their promise." October 7, 2002 - Entrust Press Release - Entrust unveils comprehensive vision and product delivery roadmap for web services security "Enterprise security must be comprehensive for it to be truly effective. Unlike many Web Services security point solutions now coming to market, the Entrust Secure Transaction Platform covers all the bases by offering identification, entitlements, and verification services across the enterprise." -- Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink LLC October 7, 2002 - eWeek - Excelon Adds XML, .Net Support to Extensible Information Server "Instead of focusing on a general-purpose store for XML data, as these companies have done in the past, many XML storage vendors are moving to more purpose-built data stores that are focused on solving specific problems where XML data storage can add value," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass. "In the case of Excelon, they are moving toward the management of XML documents that are used in [business-to-business] interactions." October 4, 2002 - 01 Informatique (01net.fr) - Les outils pour tester les services web restent rudimentaires Les outils de tests ne sont pas suffisamment adaptés aux services web. Une étude récente du cabinet d'analystes Zapthink précise que " les entreprises implémentant des services web ne peuvent se satisfaire d'outils de tests qui se limitent à prendre en charge le support de XML. Elles ont besoin d'outils complètement repensés " . Jason Bloomberg, l'auteur de l'étude, ajoute que " ces outils doivent notamment être capables de prendre en charge les services synchrones et asynchrones, ainsi que l'orchestration des services web " . September 30, 2002 - InfoWorld - Actional, AmberPoint eye Web services management "It's clear that things are exploding in this space, but what's happening now is that every company has a different marketing message and it's confusing," said Jason Bloomberg, principal analyst at ZapThink. Bloomberg said that management really involves four distinct areas: traditional systems management for availability and performance, life cycle management for rolling out new Web services and versioning, business management to give a dashboard view of criteria such as how many orders processed, and services-oriented architecture support to piece together many fine-grained Web services into one coarse-grained component. September 30, 2002 - Line 56 - E,piphany Supports .NET E.piphany's own architecture is based on J2EE. According to ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg, the fact that it can interoperate with a tool from the .NET world is a proof point of Microsoft's new direction: commitment to Web services interoperability, a departure from Microsoft's traditional product and technology strategy. The endgame, says Bloomberg, is true platform neutrality. "Offering a client an application as a Web service, getting .NET and J2EE to work together, makes the platform neutral." Customers are the ultimate beneficiaries, as they won't be locked into rival technologies and rival vendors. Until now, interoperability has blossomed mainly in the portals arena, where it is by definition necessary to pull together applications from different, often disparate, technology platforms. Bloomberg is encouraged by today's indication that interoperability has a future in CRM as well. September 30, 2002 - Application Development Trends - Testing Web services: Even more complex ''There's a lot of stuff missing from Web services testing,'' said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, a consultancy in Waltham, Mass. ''It's not on any company's radar'' quite yet. ''It's still not clear how to test orchestrated sites, especially if there's more than one company involved,'' Bloomberg said. He sees agile development as ''the only approach to testing Web services in corporate environments,'' because the test is developed, the component passes and then a fully tested, scaled application grows gradually. ''Everything you produce is fully tested; it passes every day,'' he explained. September 30, 2002 - InternetWeek - Vendors Update Web Services Management Platforms The challenge with Web services is that although they can be fairly easy to code and create, as they grow within an organization -- and beyond the firewall -- they can create a management and provisioning nightmare of quasi-point-to-point connections. Indeed, when it comes to Web services, there is often "little consideration of the weightier issue of how to manage them," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. September 30, 2002 - Actional Press Release - Actional Launches Advanced Web Services Management Platform "Many enterprises are taking steps to incorporate Web services into their IT infrastructures, but in reality most efforts today are focused on ad hoc Web services creation, with little consideration of the weightier issue of how to manage them," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. "With the launch of Actional SOAPstation, Actional is targeting what is clearly the next critical need for customers deploying Web services -- a powerful management, security and distribution platform." September 30, 2002 - eWeek - HP Teams With BEA in Deal to Bundle WebLogic With HP-UX One analyst viewed HP's moves as a way of increasing its Java 2 Enterprise Edition offerings by teaming with the top two Java application server vendors. However, it's a delicate line to walk, said Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, of Cambridge, Mass. "[HP] would then be looking to be sought as a pre-eminent vendor of server solutions," Schmelzer said. "Of course, the devil is in the details. If the HP-BEA alignment gets too tight, IBM will seek to work with another vendor, perhaps Dell [Computer Corp.]?" The BEA pact confirms that HP is out of the application server market, a decision made when the company absorbed Compaq Computer Corp. earlier this year. "For BEA, this is a great move since it gives them access to one of the largest installed server bases around: HP and Compaq servers," Schmelzer said. September 30, 2002 - ComputerWorld - Web Services Management Software Begins to Emerge "This category is definitely critical to the success of Web services across the enterprise and between companies," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Mass. "But it's true that Web services management is facing a bit of a catch-22. You need to have a lot of Web services to justify a Web services management platform." September 27, 2002 - eWeek - IBM Eyes Hosted Web Services Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, of Cambridge, Mass., said that Project Allegro is ahead of its time. Billing and metering will be an important aspect of Web services, but not until late 2004 or early 2005, after such issues as security, management and transactions mature and are dealt with. Other industry observers say another key issue that needs to be settled before billing and metering becomes important is determining who would want to pay for Web services. "Business models that require paying for content online have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to establish," he said. "Why will paying for Web services online be any different?" September 24, 2002 - Line 56 - HP Becomes .NET Integrator Microsoft has gained an important integrator, says ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg. "Microsoft doesn't get much penetration into the enterprise, and HP can help. They'll open up the doors at large companies." Once those doors are open, HP can contribute something else with which Microsoft hasn't had historic success. "Microsoft never had much of a professional services arm," Bloomberg says. HP's developers are an important constituency for Microsoft, he adds. "The move from VisualBasic to VisualBasic.NET is a move towards object-oriented programming, so some developers are asking why they shouldn't switch to Java. There's a risk of losing the core developer base." Gaining developers at HP mitigates this risk. September 24, 2002 - The Star Online (Malaysia) - Security breaches: Be prepared, says Sun In June, ZapThink projected the web security services market would expand to US$4.4bil (RM16.8bil) worldwide by 2006. September 23, 2002 - eWeek - New Web Services to Run the Security Gamut "Standards all by themselves aren't technologies," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass. "They don't tell you what you need to build; they just provide some of the ground rules. It's up to vendors to implement those standards and to provide the value-add on top of them." September 23, 2002 - NetworkWorld - XML appliances proliferating "All these companies see XML as the next network traffic that needs to be tamed. And they have a good point," says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. Traffic management for XML will become increasingly important as traffic levels multiply, experts say. ZapThink predicts burgeoning growth: While XML today accounts for less than 2% of enterprise network traffic, by 2006 almost 25% of LAN traffic will contain XML documents, the firm says. XML's processing requirements differ from switching and network protocol routing, Schmelzer says. September 23, 2002 - Network World - Securing Web Services Recent surveys by Hurwitz Group and ZapThink show that security is the No. 1 obstacle to adoption of corporate Web services. September 23, 2002 - eWeek - Arbortext to Aid Life Sciences Industry "The moves [Arbortext is] making in the pharmaceutical industry are fairly significant," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass. "They are applying this technology to solve some serious, heavy problems in pharmaceuticals. ... The whole drug discovery to product development to product release is a complicated, heavily regulated process that requires a ton of documentation." September 23, 2002 - Computer World - NorthAmerican Logistics Cuts XML Translation Costs with Software AG's Tamino Going forward, expect such native XML databases to become more common as the use of XML to represent all kinds of data spreads, says Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at Zapthink LLC, an XML consultancy in Waltham, Mass. XML databases are better than traditional ones at preserving XML hierarchies, says Schmelzer. For example, a document can be stored as a document instead of being shoehorned into rows and columns, Schmelzer says. Tamino was the first to market and remains on top. But a number of other vendors, including IxiaSoft Inc. and Neocore Inc., offer similar products. In the future, expect to see vendors of traditional relational database management products, such as Oracle Corp., ship native XML databases as well, he says. September 19, 2002 - Hi Tech Insider (Italian) - Previsioni Gartner per i server. IBM punta alle PMI con WAS Express Jason Bloomberg, analista di ZapThink, crede poco in questa politica di IBM perché secondo lui: "WAS non potrà mai essere un prodotto plug-and-play, richiedendo sempre un alto livello di customizzazione e molto lavoro. IBM non può semplicemente limitarsi a disabilitare alcune feature per dire che è adatto per il mid-market." Sul fronte delle vendite, a dispetto del nuovo hardware Regatta e di varie promozioni commerciali, l'iSeries si appresta invece a chiudere un altro anno negativo, essenzialmente a causa del rallentamento economico internazionale. September 18, 2002 - The Foggy Mountain Report (blog) - Coming, an Internet Built on Peer-to-Peer If you agree with any of these thoughts, then you can approach with interest the latest thinking at ZapThink LLC, an XML research firm in Waltham, Mass. Senior analyst Ron Schmelzer, founder and an early XML standards participant, and consulting analyst Jason Bloomberg produced a report on Web services, admitting the term is overhyped but asserting nevertheless that Web services will prevail. In addition to "The Pros and Cons of Web Services," Bloomberg wrote a recent ZapThink newsletter piece on the essentials of Web services. September 17, 2002 - Vordel Press Release - Vordel to Provide Security for Software Giant's Web Services Solutions in Iberia "We're very pleased to announce the partnership. There's definite synchronicity between our companies' philosophies," said Derek O'Carroll, CEO at Vordel. "We're also delighted that our solution is to make further inroads into a market that, according to analysts, ZapThink, is growing by 300% every year, and is predicted to reach $4.4 billion in 2006," continued O'Carroll. September 17, 2002 - ArborText Press Release - Arbortext Focuses on Life Sciences "Arbortext has long been a pioneer in XML authoring and publishing software," said Ron Schmelzer, Senior Analyst at ZapThink. "Arbortext has shown that is able to offer high-quality, focused software to support every aspect of the drug development lifecycle - from discovery, clinical trials and regulatory approvals to manufacturing, marketing and medical affairs." September 17, 2002 - eWeek - Arbortext Targeting Life Sciences Industry "Arbortext has long been a pioneer in XML authoring and publishing software," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass. "Arbortext has shown that it is able to offer focused software to support every aspect of the drug development lifecycle—from discovery, clinical trials and regulatory approvals to manufacturing, marketing and medical affairs." September 17, 2002 - TechTarget - The future of Web services At the moment, most Web services projects are skunkworks operations, says Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, a consulting firm in Waltham, Mass. "A lot of Web services use is on the grass-roots level, where developers are learning the technology," he says. "This doesn't have much effect in the data center, at least not yet." Most companies are still in "dabbling" mode, he says. Forrester's Schadler believes that "Web services are a kind of magical technology" to help standardize the systems management function for a wide range of corporate resources – server farms, database, storage and the like. To prepare for these changes, data center folks would be well-served to take a few steps. First, work with your existing system management vendors to understand what they have planned for Web services extensions to existing products. For instance, "IBM is reworking Tivoli to be more Web services-oriented," says ZapThink's Bloomberg. "But it's not like IBM is going to do it all by itself; they're working with AmberPoint." September 16, 2002 - InfoWorld - Iona extends Web services to CORBA "Right now, CIOs are starting to notice Web services and they are saying to themselves, 'How can we continue our CORBA investment but also save money and improve services by adding Web services to it?'" said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, in Waltham, Mass. September 16, 2002 - Mass High Tech - Quadrasis steps out of parent Hitachi’s shadow with security software apps "Quadrasis is a little different, because they have offerings in two different categories: a Web services security platform and an XML firewall (the SOAP Content Inspector)," Bloomberg said. “But they’re competing with Vordel (Ireland), Reactivity (Belmont, Calif.), and Westbridge Technology (Mountain View, Calif.) Each differentiates itself a little bit from the others in their offerings, but I think it will be between nine and 12 months before the demand for these products really explodes and we’ll see who comes out on top." September 16, 2002 - e-Promag.com - IBM Goes for SMB Market with WAS Express, Other Simplified Solutions But no matter what, WebSphere Application Server (WAS) isn’t a plug-and-play product, said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst for ZapThink. It always requires a lot of customization and work. You can’t just turn off some functionality and say it’s for the mid-market, he said. September 2002 - eContent Magazine - XML Hits the Big Time Count ZapThink's Ron Schmelzer among those who think that XML-specific storage solutions have a place in today's enterprise. "Native XML Data Stores - what we call NXDs - are relevant. Lots of big companies are using them," said Schmelzer. And while some technical people, as well as vendors, can be very passionate about one choice of repository over another, Schmelzer looks at the choice with the dispassionate view of an analyst. September 13, 2002 - Line56 - Arbortext's XML Authoring Push Analyst Ron Schmelzer of ZapThink says that, until recently, companies have had no option but to create these kinds of documents by hand. XML authoring expands the possibilities by automating paperwork. "It's for any document that has some sort of structure." Putting in XML by hand, while an alternative, is far less efficient; in a document-deluged business environment "no one wants to code more than once." September 13, 2002 - InfoWorld - Startups tackle XML traffic "In the last three months or so we've seen a number of startups emerge, addressing these challenges," said Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink. "And it is likely that we'll soon hear more from Cisco Systems, Lucent, Nortel, and 3Com." According to Schmelzer, content inspection is an intensive task, particularly when it comes to avoiding latency. In a report issued in July, Schmelzer calls this new class of products "XML proxies," or hardware and software solutions that listen for XML traffic on the network. He added they can operate as an XML gateway or as applications on the network. September 13, 2002 - CNet - Oracle seeks Web services accord Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with market research firm Zapthink, said Oracle's proposal is a much-needed move to sort out the rival specifications. "It's a big mess. We need some sanity--and the W3C is typically viewed as the organization to do that," Schmelzer said. September 13, 2002 - ComputerWoche (German) - XML - Chance für Startups Tools, die den XML-basierenden (Extensible Markup Language) Datenverkehrs absichern sollen, entwickeln zur Zeit hauptsächlich junge Unternehmen. Laut Ron Schmelzer, Analyst beim mit den Themen XML und Web Services beschäftigten Marktforschungsunternehmen ZapThink, haben jedoch Hersteller wie Cisco, Lucent, Nortel und 3Com ähnliche Produkte in der Pipeline. Sie basieren auf Techniken, die SOAP-Pakete (Simple Object Access Protocol) analysieren. Die Pakete enthalten XML-Daten, die über das Transportprotokoll HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) transportiert werden. September 13, 2002 - New Media Age Magazine - Security professionals 'very concerned' about cyber-terrorism According to spending projections from ZapThink, the value of the worldwide online security market is expected to boom from just $400m (325m) in 2001 to more than $4.4bn (£2.8bn) in 2006. September 12, 2002 - SearchWebServices - XML firewalls dig deeper than traditional firewalls An XML firewall has to go beyond inspecting the packet or protocol level to examining the actual content of the transmission, said Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst and founder of Waltham, Mass.-based ZapThink, a firm specializing in Web services and XML. "This is much more complicated as messages have to be decrypted or uncompressed without adding latency," he said. For example, a SOAP message needs to be examined to make sure it's an authorized request, said Jason Bloomberg, another senior analyst with ZapThink, a firm that specializes in security. Examining the message is even more complicated if part or the entire message is encrypted, he said. September 9, 2002 - Westbridge News Release - XML Application Firewalls Secure Expected Explosion of XML and Web Services Traffic According to Research Report. Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst at ZapThink, notes that the amount of XML traffic on the network is set to explode, with XML traffic representing 25% of all LAN network traffic by 2006. "Traditional firewalls are not able to distinguish when XML traffic is malicious or unauthorized. New content-aware networking products must transcend the limited OSI model and focus on the content of the message itself," says Bloomberg. September 9, 2002 - Entwickler - Web Services Test-Tools weiterhin Mangelware (German) Jason Bloomberg, Analyst von ZapThink, hat sich in einem 25-seitigen Research Report kritisch über das Thema Web Services Testing Tools geäußert. Von den begutachteten Tool-Herstellern konnten laut Bloomberg nur drei Firmen, nämlich Parasoft Corp., Rational Software und Mercury Interactive, brauchbare Test-Tools liefern. Auch prophezeit Bloomberg für die nächsten Jahre eine Zunahme von Fehlern in Web Services, die mit den bemängelten aktuellen Test-Tools nicht bereinigt werden können. September 9, 2002 - Mass High Tech - Cambridge startup has Clear Method for better XML Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst with the Waltham-based analyst firm ZapThink, said Water is a “seriously cool technology.” ZapThink is dedicated specifically to XML and Web services. “We have to remember that the path to success is littered with seriously cool technology that never made it,” Bloomberg said. “There’s no question that it’s a brilliant innovation, but there’s no guarantee that it will take off. The real unknown here is going to be Silvestri. It’s going to be up to him to add the business aspect to the company.” September 9, 2002 - Business in Vancouver - Local firm lands cash in a difficult market Ronald Schmelzer comments on the XML Global $2 Million round of financing. Available for Subscribers Only. September 5, 2002 - Investor's Business Daily - Security Concerns Challenge Web Services Users "A lot of the current security vendors are Web-services-enabling their products. We think at least two-thirds of the overall software security market will be enabled by 2006." Jason Bloomberg, Analyst, ZapThink LLC September 5, 2002 - SearchWebServices - Web services: Many uses, many worries ...Security should be a consideration right from the beginning of any Web services project, said Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst with ZapThink, a Waltham, Mass.-based analyst firm that specializes in Web services and XML. "You can't be a little bit secure. It's like you have 10 doors and you only lock eight of them," Bloomberg said. .... Another consideration for Web services is getting a firewall that can scan XML traffic. "Most traditional firewalls would be inadequate for this purpose," Bloomberg said. .... Now, the theory behind Web services is nothing new. Technologies that offer applications via networks such as CORBA have been around for a while. "Web services are not revolutionary, they are more evolutionary," Bloomberg said. September 4, 2002 - ADTmag.com - Search is on for Web services testing tools "In the agile approach, testing begins by automating the collection and representation of new user requirements," Bloomberg writes. "The tests themselves, as well as the resulting code, develop iteratively, so that when the code is complete, the test is as well -- and the code always passes the test at each iteration. If each individual Web service has its own automated test, then orchestrating Web services also includes orchestrating the tests." September 3, 2002 - eWeek - BEA Taking Developer Push on the Road "BEA definitely wants to play in the big leagues with IBM and Microsoft [Corp.], and they've done a really good job of it so far," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass. "Both of the two titans have broad developer relations programs, so BEA has to devote the same kind of resources just to keep up. What I find most interesting about their strategy with the dev2dev program is that it looks like BEA considers Microsoft to be their biggest competitor for developer mind share, not IBM," even though IBM—with its WebSphere platform—is the company's top competitor from a market perspective. September 2, 2002 - eWeek - "Microsoft Previews Kit for Building Web Services" Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass., XML and Web services market research company, said WSDK is not necessarily a step away from IBM as much as a move to bring Microsoft developers into the company's Web services fold. "Basically, they had to do it to get their developers to use the stuff they spent time creating," Schmelzer said. "This allows them to take their [Active Server Pages] .Net developers and other developers and give them a kick in the pants to use it." Microsoft still wants interoperability, Schmelzer said he believes, "but they don't want their stuff to be replaceable. Like in the J2EE [Java 2 Enterprise Edition] world, you can remove BEA [Systems Inc.] software and replace it with something else." September 2, 2002 - TechTarget - ZapThink Answers More Questions Founder and senior analyst of ZapThink, Ron Schmelzer is a well-known expert in the field of XML and XML-based standards and initiatives. Ron was king enough to answer the questions we couldn't get to during our Webcast. If you couldn't attend Ron's Webcast, be sure to watch the archived Webcast now. You'll also want to visit our Featured Topic on ZapThink and read more ZapThink analysis on SearchWebServices.com. September 2, 2002 - InformationWeek - Palm Strikes Development Deal With BEA Systems Palm and BEA's project will use Web-services standards such as XML, so businesses won't have to redesign or scale down applications to run on a Palm device, says Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst at technology researcher ZapThink. September 2002 - Software Report (pdf) - Service-Oriented Integration: An Opportunity Market Waiting to be Tapped According to Ron Schmelzer, Senior Analyst at ZapThink, organizations which position themselves astutely in the integration market now will be reaping the rewards in 2006. September 2002 - InformIT (Excerpt from SAMS Book) - Validating XML with the Document Type Definition (DTD) To ensure validity in your XML documents, learn how to use DTDs, which provide a roadmap for describing and documenting the structure. Topics include DTD examples, structure of a DTD, drawbacks, and alternatives.(Correct byline: Travis Vandersypen and Ronald Schmelzer) August 2002 - FileMaker - Unleashing the Power of FileMaker 6 with XML (article) Explore the possibilities of using XML import/export with FileMaker Pro 6 in this white paper by Ronald Schmelzer, Senior Analyst for ZapThink, LLC. August 30, 2002 - InfoWorld - "OASIS fuels security agenda" "OASIS has become a popularity party," said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at Boston-based XML and Web services research company ZapThink. "It has less to do with 56 [companies] having something to really contribute than it has to do with 56 [companies] wanting to jump on the bandwagon." August 30, 2002 - InformationWeek - "Palm Strikes Development Deal With BEA Systems" Under the deal, Palm will develop client software and development tools that would let programmers write apps in WebLogic's development environment that can be delivered to Palm devices. Palm and BEA's project will use Web-services standards such as XML, so businesses won't have to redesign or scale down applications to run on a Palm device, says Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst at technology researcher ZapThink. The deal could also help both companies stave off competition from Microsoft's Pocket PC software. August 29, 2002 - Application Development Trends - "Dark Side of XML and privacy" The data-describing power of XML could have a very dark side in the hand of mischievous individuals, says a prominent XML market analyst. Says Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at the industry analyst firm ZapThink, in Waltham, Mass. "XML is essentially automating identify theft," said Schmelzer, a speaker at the XML Web Services One Conference in Boston. August 2002 - iSource Online - "Enterprise Application Integration 101" Part of the problem with, and expense of, EAI is the sheer number of applications that could potentially be connected within any given enterprise, which gives rise to what Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at technology consultancy ZapThink, calls "the point-to-point connection problem." It's one thing, the analyst says, to connect one system to one other system, creating one link in each direction, but if you have 10 systems to connect, that can create up to 90 point-to-point connections. Additionally, Bloomberg suggests that companies often find EAI implementations to be particularly difficult because of the pace at which the business environment and a company's IT landscape change. Says Bloomberg: "It's hard to sit down and write all the requirements for what you want [in EAI], go out and buy it and then install it. By the time you do that, your requirements are all different because business just moves too fast." August 26, 2002 - SwingTide News Release - "New Company, Swingtide, Launched to Manage XML Proliferation, Protect Quality of Online Business" According to industry research firm ZapThink, the financial services industry alone will spend $985 million on XML technologies this year, and spend $8.3 billion by 2005. August 26, 2002 - DataPower News Release - "DataPower Technology Delivers Industry's First Wire-speed Intelligent XML-aware Network Device" "Processing XML is radically different from switching and network protocol routing. While ordinary network infrastructures simply scan packet headers, XML-aware networks are capable of understanding, parsing, filtering and processing the XML content itself," said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, LLC, a firm focused on XML and Web services research, analysis and insight. "DataPower helps businesses of all sizes realize this value by balancing the needs of speed, security and reliability without sacrificing the flexibility and benefits of XML." August 26, 2002 - Line56 - "Microsoft Unveils WS Developer Kit" To be sure, there's a lot of shaking and baking with Web services standards these days, says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. "There's absolutely a race going on to get Web services in the hands of developers," he says. "Anybody can build standards, but people have to use it or else you lose it." That's why Microsoft pushed out this early release of WSDK, Schmelzer says, adding, "I don't expect this to be production class. And I wouldn't be surprised to see some problems crop up." August 26, 2002 - eWeek - Appliances Accelerate XML Data Traffic Most enterprises using XML are handling it on application servers that run specific applications. As Web services are deployed and the amount of XML data grows, companies will need XML-aware devices to manage and process XML centrally rather than in individual application servers, as well as to deal with security issues, said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink LLC. The Waltham, Mass., consultancy predicts that XML data will rise from about 2 percent of LAN traffic today to about 25 percent in the next five years. August 26, 2002 - eWeek - Borland Strikes Technology Deals With IBM, BEA Systems, Parasoft One analyst said Borland is pushing to show that it can compete in the application and Web services development tools space. "The demos [of Borland's technology] were as good as any I have seen from Microsoft [Corp.] or IBM," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass. "XML Web services is making its way to the masses, and those who think that only the big boys have the lead share here are mistaken." August 26, 2002 - Network World - "Vendors poke, prod XML traffic" "XML traffic is really inefficient," says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. "It's usually 10 times larger than what you could do equivalently with a binary file." Not only is XML traffic less efficient, but its processing requirements also differ from switching and network protocol routing, Schmelzer says. Rather than simply scanning packet headers, XML-aware devices need to understand, parse, filter and process XML content, he says. August 26, 2002 - InfoWorld - "Burning for Web services" Its SAML-assertion capability makes SOAP Content Inspector a cut above the competing XML firewalls flooding the market, such as those from Vordel, Westbridge Technologies, and Reactivity, said Jason Bloomberg, a security analyst at ZapThink, a Web services research company in Boston. August 26, 2002 - InternetWeek - DataPower Delivers Accelerator For XML, Web Services Traffic There's a big difference in moving XML traffic versus traditional network protocols, according to Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. Ordinary network infrastructures scan packet headers; XML-aware networks can parse, filter, and process the XML content itself, he said. Moving that process to a specialized device can improve application and network performance. August 26, 2002 - WebServices.org - "DataPower announce XML-aware network infrastructure, XA35 XML Accelerator(TM)" "Processing XML is radically different from switching and network protocol routing. While ordinary network infrastructures simply scan packet headers, XML-aware networks are capable of understanding, parsing, filtering and processing the XML content itself," said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, LLC, a firm focused on XML and Web services research, analysis and insight. "DataPower helps businesses of all sizes realize this value by balancing the needs of speed, security and reliability without sacrificing the flexibility and benefits of XML." August 23, 2002 - CIPS News from National - "XML Expert: Ron Schmelzer" This week, Stephen Ibaraki, I.S.P., has an exclusive interview with, Ron Schmelzer, an internationally renowned expert in XML and XML-based standards and initiatives. Ron is the lead author for SAMS XML and Web Services Unleashed. Excerpt: "XML will increasingly become part of the everyday aspect of technology. In fact, it will soon become invisible. Just as TCP/IP and HTTP have become part of most of the applications we use these days, so too will XML and Web Services. Right now, they are top of mind as we resolve some of the lingering issues that prevent widespread use. However, once these issues are resolved, we can expect XML and Web Services to survive and become part of the every day framework of our lives." August 23, 2002 - XML Journal - NeoCore XMS 2.6 Delivers Performance for Mainstream Applications Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink, LLC, an XML and Web services-focused analyst group, said, "NeoCore XMS 2.6 allows users a potent way of storing, managing, and navigating through the rich hierarchy of XML in ways not possible with other types of solutions." August 23, 2002 - E-Business*Standards*Today - Study: software tools not testing Web services architectures According to a report released today by XML research company ZapThink, LLC, many software testing tool vendors provide rudimentary Web Services testing, but few vendors have plans to provide tools that will help companies test standards-based service-oriented architectures. August 2002 - SAMS Publishing - Sams' Birds-of-a-Feather Lounge: Service-Oriented Development: Changing How Software is Written Featuring Jason Bloomberg.In the short term, Web Services promise a simplification of the integration process. Long term, however, the principles of service-oriented development promise to change the way that software is architected and developed, signifying a fundamental shift in the software industry. This session explains seven principles in which Web Services technologies and Service-oriented development will change the way software is planned, created, and used. August 21. 2002 - CM Focus - http://www.cmfocus.com/xq/asp/sid.3D94A6CA-7C92-11D7-9D4B-00508B44AB3A/articleid.468B9622-01F2-4DBC-A109-C6B1A9FAF218/qx/display.htm Metadata is often an afterthought, creating a challenge to content managers. Companies frequently roll out large content management systems without giving proper consideration to a vocabulary or categorisation engine and are then left with volumes of content that can no longer be located. Companies that have been down this road are left with any number of legacy document management systems. ZapThink, an XML analyst firm, estimates that many enterprises have between 8-15 sources of legacy content, with over 40 per cent of that content being redundant. Indeed, metadata is critical to long-term investment in corporate capital. August 20, 2002 - NetworkWorld - "Gateway aimed at securing SOAP traffic" Security has emerged as the No. 1 inhibitor to cross-enterprise rollouts of Web services, according to a handful of recent surveys from research firms such as the Hurwitz Group and ZapThink. August 20, 2002 - CW360 - Quadrasis offers SAML support through XML firewall Content Inspector's SAML support gives it an edge over competing XML firewalls on the market from Vordel, Westbridge Technology and Reactivity, said Jason Bloomberg, security analyst at Web services research firm ZapThink. August 19, 2002 - eWeek - "XML Firewalls Aid Services" "What's special about the Quadrasis product is that it performs SAML attribute mapping," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, also in Cambridge. "In contrast, products like Vordel [Ltd.'s] support SAML but delegate the management of the SAML tokens to a third-party product." August 19, 2002 - Electronic News - "It's Got Content" Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink, says Tarari is the first to develop processors that will have the ability to not only process packets, but really understand the traffic that is going over the network. "What Tarari is bringing to the foreforont is a specialized chipset that can process content at wire speeds," he said. August 19, 2002 - NeoCore News Release - NeoCore XMS 2.6 Delivers Performance for Mainstream Applications Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink, LLC, an XML and Web Services-focused analyst group, said that NeoCore's release of XMS 2.6 illustrates the forward-thinking advancements the company is capable of producing for XML information management. "NeoCore XMS 2.6 allows users a potent way of storing, managing, and navigating through the rich hierarchy of XML in ways not possible with other types of solutions," Schmelzer says. "These enhancements allow companies to save time and money, while working smarter and faster in order to thrive in today's challenging economic environment." August 19, 2002 - InfoWorld - Quadrasis offers SAML attribution through XML firewall Its unique form of SAML support is a key distinction the SOAP Content Inspector holds over similar competing XML firewalls flooding the market, from the likes of Vordel, Westbridge Technologies, and Reactivity, said Jason Bloomberg, security analyst at Web services research firm ZapThink, in Boston. "What's special about the Quadrasis product is that it performs SAML attribute mapping: It maps the request authentication from requestor to recipient, thus actively participating in a single-sign-on infrastructure," said Bloomberg. "In contrast, products like Vordel's support SAML, but delegate the management of the SAML tokens to a third-party product." August 19, 2002 - eBizQ - "B2B Web Services Projects Still on the Horizon" Overall, only about 12 percent of current Web services projects are aimed directly at B2B integration, says analyst Ron Schmelzer of ZapThink, an XML and Web services research and analysis firm. “Of everyone using Web services,” he estimates, “85 percent are for internal use only, 12 percent are for B2B situations and maybe 3 percent are for B2C.” But, he notes, many of the internal activities may be preliminary work to longer-range B2B projects. “They may say, ‘Well, once we’ve done this, it’s pretty trivial to allow stuff to go across the firewall.’” August 19, 2002 - Quadrasis News Release - Hitachi Introduces SOAP Content Inspector for Secure Web Services; Enables Secure Web Services beyond the Corporate Intranet According to a recently released "XML and Web Services Security" report from ZapThink, LLC, security is the immediate roadblock facing widespread implementation of Web services technologies across the enterprise. ZapThink, LLC, believes the XML and Web services security market will grow to more than $4 billion by the year 2006, growing more than 300 % annually. August 19, 2002 - eWeek - Sun to Target Linux-Based Initiative at Developers "We were surprised at how Web services apparently has little if any place in the new Sun software world order," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass. "We heard about data center, business logic and edge products [where LAMP resides], but Web services only came up in response to an analyst question. Their tune has changed from 'Sun ONE is the platform for Web services' to 'We'll support the Web services standards, but we don't think they'll be successful.' ... They couldn't be the Web services leader, so they're pretending like they didn't want to play the game in the first place." August 19, 2002 - InternetWeek - "Quadrasis Delivers Security For XML, Web Services" Analysts like ZapThink have been forecasting a huge market for Web services security and firewall products, one that could grow to $4 billion by 2006. August 2002 - XML Journal - Managing your XML Documents with Schemas The XML Schema Definition Language solves a number of problems posed with Document Type Definitions. Because DTDs prompted much confusion and complaining among XML developers, the W3C set about creating a new standard for defining a document's structure. What the W3C created is something even more complex and flexible than DTDs: the XML Schema Definition Language. In this article, by Ronald Schmelzer of ZapThink, LLC and Travis Vandersypen, we'll look at many aspects of schemas and how you can build and use them. August 2002 - IBM News - WS-Transaction Testimonials "ZapThink believes that the convergence of Web Services choreography, transactions, workflow automation, and business process standards such as those recently announced by IBM, Microsoft, and BEA is critical to the successful application of Web Services to real-world business problems in the enterprise. - It is clear that these vendors are leveraging their thought leadership positions by putting a stake in the ground and establishing a foundation for reliable, enterprise-class distributed computing approaches based on XML and Web Services." - ZapThink, LLC (an industry analyst group focused on XML and Web Services). August 15, 2002 - Fujitsu IT News - Japanese Language Article on Web Services Security See original article (Japanese). August 13, 2002 - CNet - "Language barriers on the Web? " "Sometimes developers use quirks of HTML to improve layout, design, etc," Ronald Schmelzer, analyst with Waltham, Mass.-based XML consulting firm ZapThink, wrote in an e-mail interview. "XHTML doesn't tolerate deviations from the specification, making it a bit more rigid as well as complex. What will be the challenge for XHTML is getting HTML designers to think like programmers--not an easy task." August 12, 2002 - eWeek - Sybase Readying Tool for XML, Web Services "PowerBuilder 9 is both an XML development tool and a Web services development tool now—definitely a case of teaching an old dog new tricks," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, of Cambridge, Mass. Bloomberg said Sybase is aiming Version 9.0 at its established PowerBuilder users. However, many of those customers also use Java 2 Enterprise Edition and .Net. Sybase, he said, wants to support Web services interfaces throughout its product lineup, rather than have a separate Web services product strategy. August 12, 2002 - Washington TechWay - "On guard - As demand for data security soars, InfoSecure readies for market" "Their challenge is that they have to make this (software) as transparent as possible," said Ronald Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink, an industry analyst firm for XML and Web services based in Waltham, Mass. "If they do that, they'll be successful. If they make something that people have to think about each time they do it, they'll have the same problems as every other DRM provider." August 9, 2002 - Internet Developer News - "Does XML Content Require XML-Specific DBMS, Storage?" One recent study finds that demand for these solutions could explode over the next three years -- as XML standards become more widespread, and pricing comes down for XML-aware DBMS features (both native and enabled). Zapthink's review of the topic "XML Data and Storage Trends" found that while XML-enabled DBMS vendors accounted for only 15% of the total database market in 2000, the popularity of XML databases will skyrocket over the next several years and account for 65% of all DBMS sales by 2005. August 7, 2002 - Internetnews.com - "OASIS, W3C to Helm Web Services Security Forum" Estimating the Web services security market will hit $4.4 billion by 2006, ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg said that although the benefits of saving time and money with Web services are well publicized, the lack of security inhibits the ability for companies to conduct business with each over the Internet. "You can't just buy a little security," Bloomberg said in a research report. "You have to cover all the bases to be secure." August 7, 2002 - Internetnews (Korean) - Article about OASIS and W3C Korean article. Read original for context. August 6, 2002 - InternetNews.com - "Nasdaq Puts XBRL to the Test " "Now that the government wants to gain more understanding of corporate financials and try to do intelligence around different trends and seeing if any company is doing something out of the ordinary, XML is pretty much the only way to do it." said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink. "Without XML you would have to search through text formats, which would be a very labor-intensive process." August 6, 2002 - ITworld Unix Insider - Sun Among the First to Give You Liberty "Sun's work with their Identity Server and Directory Server products are the only bright lights in an otherwise muddled Sun ONE product strategy," Bloomberg says. "The Directory Server is their crown jewel. It's the only market-leading product in the entire Sun ONE line, with the possible exception of a few of the tools they got from Forte. And because these two servers support Microsoft as well as Unix environments, they will compete favorably with products like those that Microsoft will roll out under its TrustBridge initiative." August 5, 2002 - eWeek - Sybase Retools PowerBuilder for Web Services "PowerBuilder 9 is both an XML development tool as well as a Web Services development tool now—definitely a case of teaching an old dog new tricks," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, of Cambridge, Mass. "It's clear that Sybase is aiming this version of PowerBuilder at their established enterprise customers who area already PowerBuilder users." August / Septembter 2002 - XML and Web Services Magazine - "IBM Asks: Are You eXperienced?" A unified portal interface is needed to unify the different vendor interfaces, says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink. "People are building apps with all these different front ends, and corporations want a single front end. They don't want to log into the SAP portal and Seibel portal; they want to log into a single portal with pieces from different portals," he says. August 5, 2002 - eWeek - UDDI Spec Now Under OASIS "The move to OASIS is an expected, and important, step in the development of UDDI as a standard," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass. "There's no question, however, that vendors are reluctant to turn a specification over to any standards body until much of the work has been completed, which is what happened with UDDI." August 5, 2002 - CNet Asia - XML for exchanging data The language basically solves interoperability problems by providing an interface between computers, databases, and systems, said Ron Schmelzer, a consultant with ZapThink, an XML and Web Services research firm. August 2, 2002 - IT Forum - "Web services: não mais apenas para o uso interno" Os Web services estão demorando a ser amplamente adotados para aplicativos de transações b2b, por causa das limitações de escalabilidade já observadas e das falhas de autenticação e segurança, declara Ronald Schmelzer, analista da companhia de pesquisas ZapThink. Até o momento, eles têm se mostrado populares internamente, nos setores de serviços financeiros, de atendimento à saúde, farmacêutico e governamental. August / September 2002 - FileMaker Advisor - "Tying it all together with XML" Article by Ronald Schmelzer: "XML is quickly becoming the de facto communications standard. See what you can do with it." 2 Pages, Starting page 12. August 2002 - XML and Web Services Magazine - "Editors Note: Evolution or Revolution?" In his article on the principles for service-oriented development, ZapThink analyst Jason Bloomberg sees a five-year transition until most development shops have fully adopted the new approach. A similar time frame is likely for the evolution of technology and toolsets to the new model. But forward-looking shops should not wait to get started investigating technology and undertaking pilots. The technology transition to services-oriented development may be evolutionary, but its implications on the process and culture of software development are bound to be profound. August 2002 - XML and Web Services Magazine - "The Seven Principles of Service-Oriented Development" (Feature Article) Future software architectures call for a new set of development methodologies. Is your shop ready? Article by Jason Bloomberg, Senior Analyst, ZapThink LLC August 2002 - Monster.com - .NET and Web Services Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink , a research firm specializing in XML and Web services, likens .NET to "an upgrade path for Microsoft." Microsoft is clearly aiming to trump Sun's Java software initiative as a means to implement Web services in a hassle-free manner. "They're trying to win the hearts and minds of developers," Schmelzer says. "They're going for the ease of use." August 1, 2002 - TechWeb - "XML's Nasty Little Secret" As if IT security pros didn't have enough to worry about, a new study warns that firewall and routing platforms cannot intelligently process XML content. This is huge, as XML is the backbone of Web services protocols. The study, run by ZapThink, estimates that XML represents 2 percent of network traffic today, but will increase to 25 percent by 2006. Others say XML will comprise 60 percent of network traffic by next year, and more startlingly, the Web services security industry will grow from $40 million today to $4.4 billion in 2006. August 2002 - Sun Inner Circle - Network Identity: Decision Time Leave it to Microsoft to stretch the definition on what standards-based technology really means. "TrustBridge only supports companies using Kerberos," explains Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink, "which is the encryption technology heavily favored by Microsoft." July 31, 2002 - Computable - Tamino-server volgens IDC bovenaan (Dutch) De Amerikaanse analistengroep Zapthink verwacht dat de volledige markt voor native xml dataopslag en -diensten een veelvoud van deze omzet zal behalen. Aanbieders van xml-dbms moeten zich onderscheiden van leveranciers van relationele database managementsystemen door erop te wijzen dat de laatste xml-documenten slechts gedeeltelijk verwerken. July 30, 2002 - ITWorld.com (IDG.net) - HP Sets Out to Make a Splash "It's the first evidence of the combined HP-Compaq that actually makes a difference," says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, Waltham, MA. "HP is in a unique position with their Linux, Windows, and HP-UX offerings. IBM hasn't made any Itanium announcements, so this represents a key advantage." July 29, 2002 - InfoWorld - OASIS swallows UDDI.org "That global anonymous yellow pages concept was a straw man because it was never a good idea," said Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst at ZapThink, a research firm specializing in Web services, in Waltham, Mass. "Clearly, UDDI has much more appeal within the enterprise and within established groups of business partners." July 29, 2002 - InformationWeek - Web Services: Not Just For Internal Use Anymore Web services have been slow to catch on for B-to-B applications because of perceived scalability limitations and shortcomings in authentication and security, says Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst with research firm ZapThink. To date, they've been popular internally in the financial-services, health-care, pharmaceutical, and government sectors. July 29, 2002 - Advisor Publications - "XML Network Traffic to Push Current Infrastructure" The growing amount of XML-based content travelling across networks and the Internet will soon push the limits of network infrastructure, according to a report from ZapThink, an analyst group focusing on XML and Web services technology. "There is an increasing need to manage increased volume of XML network traffic, establish a consistent XML usage policy, and increase the value of the XML and Web services on the network, but current firewall and router solutions can't fill these needs," says Senior Analyst Ronald Schmelzer. "XML proxies are able to understand not only network protocols, but also the XML-based content traveling on these protocols." July 29, 2002 - Database Trends and Applications - Structured vs. Unstructured Data As the challenge of data integration and information integration climb IT professionals’ agendas, it is important to know what kind of information is out there, anyway. One commonly bandied about statistic holds that 70 percent of all corporate information is contained in legacy systems. Our friends at Neocore, a vendor of an XML-base information management system based on a self-constructing XML database solution (www.neocore.com), passed on these figures to us from Zapthink Research (www.zapthink.com), which focuses on the XML marketplace. According to ZapThink, 80 percent of enterprise content is unstructured; 9 percent is contained in relational databases and 11 percent is in legacy systems. Who is right? Who knows? Enterprises themselves usually don’t. That is why most successful data integration projects start with companies taking an inventory of their data assets. For more insight, read the September issue of Database Trends and Applications magazine. Subscribe at www.dbta.com/subscribe. July 26, 2002 - InfoWorld - "Microsoft Courts VB Faithful" "Microsoft has cause to worry that VB developers will think about moving to Java," said Jason Bloomberg, a consulting analyst at ZapThink Research, a Waltham, Mass.-based market research company that specializes in XML and Web services. July 26, 2002 - InternetWeek - "Study: Routers, Firewalls Can't Handle XML Traffic" If the lack of native security in Web services protocols isn't enough to concern users, research firm ZapThink on Friday also warned users that firewall and routing platforms lack the ability to intelligently process XML content. Not surprisingly, a new class of technology and products has risen up to fill this void. ZapThink calls them XML proxies, add-ons to firewall and network environments that have the ability to monitor XML traffic and apply business rules and IT policies such as security, routing, performance, management, transformation, and connection provisioning. July 18, 2002 - InternetWeek - "Five Things You Should Know About Internet Identity" For instance, consulting company ZapThink was very critical of the initial Liberty release, in large part because it fails to respect the privacy of users, said Jason Bloomberg, ZapThink analyst. "It's as much about perception as it is reality," said Bloomberg. "Version one leaves open for discussion how to manage privacy issues surrounding user information. They say it's up to the policies of individual companies, or that it may be further addressed in version two [of the specification]." July 2002 - Windows in Financial Services - "New Kid on the Research Block" Specializing in Web services, and out early with a report on Web services in finance, is a new firm called ZapThink. The company plans to analyze emerging technologies that will have a high impact on the way business will be run in the future with a focus on open, standards-based, loosely-coupled systems and technologies. It offers individual reports for sale, subscription, and newsletters. July 2002 - EAI Journal - "Business Activity Monitoring: EAI Meets Data Warehousing (Cover story)" "Web services' main business value point, currently, is in integrating disparate systems," says Ronald Schmelzer of the analyst firm ZapThink. "Since BAM solutions require information from a variety of heterogeneous data sources, ... Web services will serve as a unifying integration infrastructure for collecting and assimilating data from those data sources." July 11, 2002 - ZDNet Australia - "Security holds back Web services" But Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at US-based XML and Web services analyst ZapThink, thinks it's still security concerns that are holding Web services back. Bloomberg said that ZapThink research had found that Web services offered great potential for B2B communication and integration, but a lack of robust security and manageability solutions currently available was inhibiting companies from conducting business with each other via Web services. July 11, 2002 - CNet - "Money matters force standards stalemate" "This skirmish is a part of the larger 'IBM and Microsoft vs. everybody else war' that's turning the Web services arena into a big political debate," said Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with research firm ZapThink. "Every vendor wants their own specification to become the standard, and IBM and Microsoft have so much clout that that they get their way more often than not. This upsets companies like Sun, who wanted to be a market leader with that kind of clout but missed the boat." July 9, 2002 - Yahoo! Newswire - "New FileMaker Pro 6 Delivers ... Integrated XML Support for Universal Data Exchange" "By adding XML support, FileMaker is proving it can continue to deliver great benefit to corporate workgroups," said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink, an XML industry analyst group. "FileMaker ease-of-use combined with its rich XML support makes it an ideal platform for workgroups who need to boost productivity while fitting in with corporate IT environments." July 9, 2002 - Microsoft Watch - "Meet MS at the OASIS?" "OASIS was anathema to Microsoft a few years back, but OASIS has since become 'the place' for XML standards to grow and gain acceptance by developers and third-party organizations, says Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with the XML and web services consultancy ZapThink. "If not OASIS, then where? The W3C is becoming a slow, inefficient organization due to the politics and history involved in trying to 'set the direction' for the Web. However, it really is companies such as Microsoft and IBM that are setting the direction for the web, not standards organizations." July 8, 2002 - eWeek - "FileMaker Pro 6 Adds XML Support" "By adding XML support, FileMaker is proving it can continue to deliver great benefits to corporate workgroups," said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Cambridge, Mass.-based XML industry analyst firm, in a statement. "FileMaker ease of use combined with its rich XML support makes it an ideal platform for workgroups, who need to boost productivity while fitting in with corporate IT environments." July 5, 2002 - internetnews.com - "The Labyrinthine Nature of Web Services" Ron Schmelzer, analyst with XML and Web services technology research firm ZapThink, says: "ebXML envisions a future where businesses can describe their interfaces electronically and then allow businesses to dynamically locate those interfaces and then bind to them when they choose to actually do business. It's a good vision, but depends on two big things: standards and the actual implementation of those standards by businesses." July / August 2002 - OBJEKTSpektrum - "Der Europaische Flair von XML" Sicherlich eine der herausragendsten IT-Entwicklungen der letzten Jahre ist die Entstehung von XML als offene, anbieterneutrale Technologie, die es Systemen und Anwendungen erlaubt, miteinander zu kommunizieren. Trotz der allgemein wachsenden Präsenz wurde XML nicht überall in gleichem Maße angenommen. Speziell Europa hat bezüglich der Annahme und Verbreitung von XML und Web-Services eine Schlüsselrolle eingenommen. Der Artikel zeigt auf, wo Europa ganz vorne ist. June 30, 2002 - Integration Developer News - "Developer Advice as Unity over Security Emerges" Developers trying to find the best way to implement security for their XML-based web services projects will have a bit easier time defining projects and choosing products if they keep the overall landscape in mind -- and know how to navigate it. That's one of the key conclusions from a study from ZapThink on web services security just released entitled XML and Web Services Security. Just as the study is made public, the titans of web services -- Sun, Microsoft and IBM -- appear to be poised to reach an agreement on some levels of security for emerging Web Services. June 28, 2002 - Hi Tech Insider (Italian) - "Si prevede una grande crescita del mercato della sicurezza e dei Web Service basati su XML" Lo sviluppo della sicurezza dei Web service e degli standard XML dovrebbe consentire finalmente il decollo del mercato che dovrebbe rappresentare il futuro dell'informatica ed essere caratterizzato da un tasso di crescita del 300% annuo dei suoi prodotti software, almeno secondo una ricerca proposta da ZapThink. All'interno di questo nuovo settore il 65% del mercato riguarderà tool relativi ai metodi di autenticazione, autorizzazione, amministrazione e sicurezza in generale. June 28, 2002 - ZDNet - "XML Appeal" XML's appeal is that it's easy to use, and it is not bound by the rules many of the current relational databases use. XML marks data in such a way that two systems can agree on the XML format and read the data. The language basically solves interoperability problems by providing an interface between computers, databases, and systems, said Ron Schmelzer, a consultant with ZapThink, an XML and Web Services research firm. June 28, 2002 - TechRepublic - "XML product helps your organization exchange data easily across multiple systems" The language basically solves interoperability problems by providing an interface between computers, databases, and systems, said Ron Schmelzer, a consultant with ZapThink, an XML and Web Services research firm. “XML is really nothing tremendously revolutionary, (but)…it allows people to share data without having to worry about the data format, without having to worry about where the information is coming from,” said Schmelzer. June 26, 2002 - SYS-CON Radio - "Interview with Jason Bloomberg" Jason: "While the SYS-CON show is for XML, Web Services, and Java combined, the show attendees are coming mainly for Web Services, which is a great sign for the show and the economy." June 26, 2002 - XML Report (Application Development Trends) - "Security issues threaten Web services" Jason Bloomberg, a ZapThink analyst and co-author of the report, said there are three problems that must be solved before Web services security is robust enough to allow multi-company B2B systems. There are several issues involving XML technology and security standards. "The first issue is the question of perception," Bloomberg said. "Security is all about the mitigation of risk, a slippery concept because you're trying to prevent problems. So you don't really know if you're successful because you don't know if you would have had a problem if you hadn't successfully prevented it." June 25, 2002 - 15seconds.com - "Microsoft Helps To Lead Systems Integration" According to a June 10 research report published by ZapThink entitled "Service-Oriented Integration: Using Web Services and XML to Integrate Systems," all systems integration products will be Web services-enabled by 2006, and Microsoft is poised to help lead the way. "The addition of BizTalk isn't going to change the nature of integration, but Microsoft hopes that their platform will be the conduit in which these systems are accessed," says ZapThink analyst Ron Schmelzer. June 24, 2002 - JDNet (French) - "En bref international" Une étude de ZapThink vient confirmer le faible niveau de sécurité des Web Services. Difficile en effet de protéger les appels d'applications à travers le Web : les standards de sécurisation ne sont pas encore matures. Le challenge de la sécurité ne sera pas facile à relever : les Web Services touchent quasiment à toutes les disciplines informatiques. June 24, 2002 - SearchWebServices (TechTarget) - "Is Microsoft Really Committed to .NET?" Online discussion June 24, 2002 - eBizQ.net - "Two Reports Optimistic on Future of Web Services" Analysts at ZapThink share FactPoint/ORC's optimism on the future of Web services, reporting that they offer great potential for B2B communication and integration. However, the ZapThink report notes that the lack of robust security and management solutions currently inhibits their usefulness. The company predicts that by 2006 most IT security products will support or provide XML and Web services security. June 24, 2002 - e-Business Advisor and Databased Advisor - "Security Lurks on Web Services Horizon" "Web Services offer great potential for business-to-business communication and integration," says Senior Analyst Jason Bloomberg. "But the lack of robust security and management solutions currently inhibit the ability for companies to conduct business with each other via Web services over the Internet. You can't just buy a little security. You have to cover all the bases to be secure." June 24, 2002 - SZ Online (Chinese) - Chinese Language See original for excerpt. (Chinese) June 21, 2002 - NetEase - (Chinese Language) Chinese Language excerpt. See URL for more detail. June 21, 2002 - Rising.com - (Chinese Language) Chinese Language excerpt. Click on link to see original news item. June 21, 2002 - IT Pro (Japanese) - XML and Web Services Security (Japanese) Read original Japanese. Repeat at Nikkei BP site. June 21, 2002 - Mainchi Interactive (Japanese) - XML and Web Services Security (Japanese) Read original Japanese to get an understanding. June 21, 2002 - itWeb (Portugese) - "Preocupações com segurança atrasam adoção de Web services" A imaturidade e sobreposição de diversos padrões de segurança e tecnologia estão deixando as corporações cada vez mais confusas quando o assunto é proteção em Web services, de acordo com estudo realizado pela ZapThink LLC. O grupo de pesquisa cita as preocupações relacionadas a segurança como um dos maiores entraves na adoção de Web services. June 21, 2002 - Advisor Magazine - "Security Lurks on Web Services Horizon" The biggest obstacle to Web services adoption is security, according to a report from ZapThink, an analyst group focusing on XML and Web services. Aggravating the problem, says ZapThink, is the confusion caused by various overlapping standards, vendor solutions, and approaches. June 21, 2002 - InformIT - "Why XML is so Popular" XML is all the rage, but why, and why now? Ron Schmelzer provides insights into the technological and sociological forces that have combined to bring this technology to the fore. June 21, 2002 - E-Business*Standards*Today - "Study: XML, Web services security market to reach $4.4 billion by 2006" XML research company ZapThink LLC released a report today predicting the market for XML and Web services security to reach $4.4 billion by 2006, despite confusion about security due to multiple overlapping standards, vendor solutions, and approaches. June 21, 2002 - Line56 - "Web Services Security Issues" Analyst group ZapThink, which specializes in XML and Web services-related issues, today issued a report entitled, "XML and Web Services Security." It's topic currently in the limelight because, as the report states, "Security is the immediate roadblock facing widespread implementation of Web Services technologies across the enterprise." June 21, 2002 - ZDNet - "Beware of .Net sticker shock" Security will be an important part of that emerging market. Market researcher ZapThink said on Thursday that the Extensible Markup Language ( XML) and Web Services security market would top $4.4 billion in 2006. June 20, 2002 - InternetWeek - "Study: Security Worries Holding Back Web Services" Web services security is perhaps most challenging because it touches so many disciplines, from encryption to access management and beyond, said Jason Bloomberg, ZapThink senior analyst. "You can't just buy a little security" when it comes to Web services, he said. June 20, 2002 - eChannelLine - "Resolving security issues key in Web Services adoption: ZapThink" "The absence of robust XML security is the biggest obstacle to adoption of Web Services," said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at ZapThink. "You can't just dabble in security with partial protection. If you have 20 doors and lock 19, you aren't secure." June 20, 2002 - CNet Japan - XML and Web Services Security (Japanese) Read the original Japanese to get an understanding. June 19, 2002 - IONA - "ZapThink Research Applauds IONA's Approach to Service-Oriented Integration with Orbix E2A Platforms" "Founded over ten years ago to enter and develop the CORBA marketplace, IONA is one of the most important vendors of distributed computing technology in the broader integration marketplace. And, since Web services are merely the next step in distributed computing, this shift is a significant move from IONA," said Ronald Schmelzer, president of ZapThink Research. June 19, 2002 - NetworkWorld - "Forum Systems unveils XML security appliance" "Clearly, security is a roadblock. Nobody in their right mind is going to create a Web service without security," said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at XML and Web services research firm ZapThink LLC, located in Waltham, Mass. June 19, 2002 - eWeek - "Sun ONE Announcement Lacks Luster" Jason Bloomberg, an analyst at ZapThink LLC, a Web services and XML market research firm based in Cambridge, Mass., said, "I believe that fundamentally Sun is attempting a 'loss leader' strategy – give away something at a loss to get people into the store, so that you can upsell them to what they really want. The problem with Sun's approach is that the upsell is not particularly appealing." June 19, 2002 - InfoWorld - "Forum Systems unveils XML security appliance" ZapThink's Schmelzer agrees, saying that Forum is in a position to capitalize on the lack of Web services security, but also that it's still early to say whether it will. "Today, they're at Step 1 of 10. [Companies in this space] all are," he said. "This is like 1995 for Check Point [the dominant firewall company founded in 1993]." June 2002 - XML and Web Services Magazine - "Speech Web Apps Gain Boost from VoiceXML" The back end is built just like any other server-side application, using Perl, CGI, Java Server Pages (JSP), or Active Server Pages (ASP). "Just as HTML specifies how a Web page is displayed but doesn't specify a particular browser or server, VoiceXML lets you build voice-driven systems without knowing what's on the front and back ends," said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink. June 14, 2002 - E-Business*Standards*Today - "Study: Web services integration market to exceed $6 billion by 2006" According to a report released today by ZapThink, LLC, an XML industry analyst group, Web services are enabling a new class of solution called service-oriented integration (SOI) and the market for SOI solutions is expected to grow from $435 million in 2001, to over $6.2 billion by 2006. June 13, 2002 - CNet and ZDNet - "Will Web services revive Novell?" "At what point does (Web services) move from a technology to a market? That's a tricky question," said Ron Schmelzer, analyst with industry consultants ZapThink. (Repeat) June 13, 2002 - CNet - "Resilient Novell tries again" "At what point does (Web services) move from a technology to a market? That's a tricky question," said Ron Schmelzer, analyst with industry consultants ZapThink. June 12, 2002 - Line56 - "Shaky TrustBridge?" Importantly, WS-Security is neutral with respect to the encryption technology companies can use, says Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst at market researcher ZapThink. "One company can use Kerberos and another can use PKI [public key infrastructure], and WS-Security provides for interoperability between them," Bloomberg says. June 12, 2002 - eWeek and PC Magazine - "Sun Takes Developer Platform to New Level" "The Sun ONE 'product' line is a confusing hodge-podge of products of different quality levels and market penetrations," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst with ZapThink LLC, an XML and Web services research firm based in Cambridge, Mass. "Sun needs to get their act together, as IBM has done quite well, and create a cohesive product--not marketing--vision for how developers can produce applications to run on Sun ONE." June 11, 2002 - Infoconomy - The X files XML and web services analyst group ZapThink believes that demand for XML storage is set to take off, but that the XML database vendors will not be the prime beneficiaries. It forecasts that by 2005, the market for XML storage will be worth $4.1 billion (€4.47bn), but 65% of that – $2.67 billion (€2.91bn) – will be accounted for by XML-enabled relational databases, rather than pure XML databases. June 10, 2002 - InformationWeek - "Security, Management Tools That Span Company Borders" Other startups are releasing tools for building Web services, but AmberPoint is one of the first to aim to help companies monitor performance and track data flowing among multiple Web services, says Ronald Schmelzer, an analyst for ZapThink, a consulting firm that specializes in XML. "Everyone is doing integration, and it's getting pretty crowded," he says. "There will be some [consolidation] in that area." June 10, 2002 - Silicon.com - Analyst advice: How to choose an app server Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst, ZapThink The J2EE application server market has largely been commoditised, so IT directors should consider the extras that come with the platform to determine which is right for their needs. Typical items they should consider are ecommerce and personalisation capabilities, enterprise portal support, support for multiple interface devices (PDAs, mobile phones, etc), integration and web services capabilities, and legacy adapters, to name a few. IBM shops can benefit from their relationship with IBM, as well. And in today's economy, every vendor is hungry, so striking the best deal with the vendor - for software, maintenance and professional services - can often be a critical factor in making an application server decision. June 7, 2002 - InfoWorld - "Exec touts Semantic Web " Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at Zap Think in Waltham, Mass., was skeptical about the chances for the Semantic Web, however. "The Semantic Web is a good idea, since we're definitely walking our way up the integration 'stack.' As soon as we solve business process and workflow problems, semantic problems are coming up. However, it's also a classically very difficult problem to solve -- if we can solve [it] at all. We shouldn't have to wait five to 10 years for us to solve these problems in order for us to utilize Web services," Schmelzer said. June 6, 2002 - CW360 - "Web services guru bursts suppliers' Utopian bubble" There is no blueprint for managing multiple components on a day-to-day basis, according to Jason Bloomberg, principal consultant at ZapThink, an analyst firm that specialises in Web services and XML. "Implementation is still a custom exercise. There is no existing best practice in this realm," he said. "So while suppliers upgrade their product lines, the lack of management experience in user communities is compounded by the lack of standards that address management and security." June 5, 2002 - XML Report (ADT Magazine) - "Web services: The orphan technology" One of the problems with Web services is that it is a new technology without an inventor, according to Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, a Boston-based research firm specializing in XML technologies. As the co-author of a research paper titled the "Pros and Cons of Web Services," Schmelzer is generally upbeat about the technology while pointing out that unlike XML, Web services is not the deliberate creation of a standards body. It sort of sprung up like a giant mushroom in the carefully groomed lawn of XML standardization. While Tim Berners-Lee is credited as the father of the World Wide Web, there is no one who is credited as the father of Web services, Schmelzer said. June 4, 2002 - UNIX Insider (IDG.net) - "Patents in Open Standards? You Gotta' Wonder" Ron Schmelzer has a beef that can be summed up in one word: patents. Specifically, the ZapThink LLC senior analyst is up in arms about the growing trend wherein companies develop, say, a technology that then becomes part of a standard, patent it, and then announce that other companies may nonetheless implement the standard royalty free. June 3, 2002 - eWeek - "Serving Up Apps for Midsize Businesses" Despite the rush of products, at least one analyst said he believes many midsize businesses will be left behind, even by such offerings as WebSphere Express. Jason Bloomberg, with ZapThink LLC, in Cambridge, Mass., said the problem is price. "The price point of these [Java 2 Enterprise Edition] app server solutions is just too high," Bloomberg said. "I talked to some companies who had a real need for the solutions these products offered but simply didn't have the budget for it." May 24, 2002 - InfoWorld - "IBM mixes data into grid computing recipe" Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink, a research firm in Waltham, Mass., said that data grids are the next step in grid evolution. "If you have the computing power on the grid, there will also be a need for data on the grid," Schmelzer said. "In the long-term vision, people will start building applications specifically for the grid." May 21, 2002 - eWeek - "Software AG Offers Help to Insurance Industry" The need for XML support will continue to grow in the financial services industry. According to ZapThink LLC, a Waltham, Mass., research firm focused specifically on XML, the financial services industry will invest $985 million on XML technologies in 2002. By 2005, this investment will grow to more than $8.3 billion. May 16, 2002 - eWeek - "Web Services and Your Skills" "These are the key standards," says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, a research firm specializing in XML and Web services. "Anyone creating Web services of any type needs to understand them." May, 2002 - SAMS.net - Ron Schmelzer Named Featured Author by SAMS "Only the best and the brightest." That's what our publisher told us when we started searching for authors to cover Microsoft's innovative technology. And we followed through - signing on highly qualified technology experts who were also qualified writers. Many of these folks have been working closely with Microsoft on ASP.NET, Visual Studio.NET, Visual Basic .NET and more. May, 2002 - The Rational Edge - "Q&A with Industry Analysts: How Are e-Business Trends Impacting Developers and Development Teams?" Jason Bloomberg, ZapThink: The big opportunities with Web Services are down the road. Beyond simply improving integration, Web Services will improve seamless or "just-in-time" integration. If you need to integrate with a system, you will not need to know how to integrate with it ahead of time. In fact, you won't even have to know what system it is. You'll be able to just write a program that will find the appropriate Web Service, learn about it, and then bind to it, and do it all at run time. It won't have to be part of the design, and you won't even have to know what it is you want to talk to; you'll be able to just build your system so that it can find the resources it needs dynamically. That's a great promise, but it is still far from being a business reality. The pieces are falling into place, but there is still a lot of work left to be done. May 14, 2002 - UNIX Insider (IDG.net) - "XrML Spells Out Rights for Digital Assets" eXtensible rights Markup Language (XrML) is a general language for specifying rights for digital assets. However, as Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink LLC, puts it, "The name of the game for any XML standard is adoption." To that end, ContentGuard is contributing XrML to Oasis, the consortium for XML interoperability standards, in the hope of building a consensus and ensuring industry participation in the language's development. May 10, 2002 - JavaMagazin (German) - "Sun ONE bei Web Services hinten an" Analysten von Zap Think Research haben Sun Microsystems ein Hinterherhinken im Web Services-Bereich bescheinigt. Jason Bloomberg und Ronald Schmelzer sehen die Konkurrenten Microsoft und IBM meilenweit vor den Java-Erfindern aus San Fransisco. May 9, 2002 - CW360 - "The business benefits of Web services" ZapThink agrees that the business processes have not been thought about sufficiently and singles out the issue of payment as most lethal. "If you are aggregating Web services from different suppliers for your application, and forget to pay for one, then the whole application might fail," Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst says. May 7, 2002 - ZDNet - "Google: A trailblazer for Web services?" "It's something that's widely available, in production, and the general public seems to like it," ZapThink analyst Ron Schmelzer said. "Google has definitely energized a lot of forces." May 7, 2002 - Chicago Sun Times - "Switch puts brains in network" Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst, ZapThink, said, "It is clear that customers like CommWorks can leverage the power of XML routing systems such as Sarvega's XPE Intelligent XML Switch in order to provide a higher level of customer support service and reduce operational costs." May 7, 2002 - CRN - "Analysts: Sun Lacks Leadership In Web Services Space" Jason Bloomberg and Ronald Schmelzer, senior analysts with the firm, said Microsoft and IBM are far ahead of Sun with their Web services strategies because they have products to back up their plans, while Sun does not. If Sun plans to successfully sell its Sun ONE software platform, on which the company hopes solution providers will deliver Web services to customers, Sun must create a strong product road map for developers, said Schmelzer. May 7, 2002 - ECOM World - "Peregrine’s EDI Customers Stable, But Need Backup Plan" But what if the Peregrine’s stock, which has lost two-thirds of its value in the past week and is currently trading for less than $1, continues its slide and the company declares bankruptcy? “I am 90% confident that if that happened, a Sterling or GE would step in and rescue any stranded customers,” says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst for consulting firm ZapThink LLC, Waltham, Mass. May 6, 2002 - Sarvega News Release - "Sarvega Helps CommWorks Streamline Customer Service Operations" "With the announcement of its first commercial deployment in tandem with the introduction of the XPE Switch, Sarvega is validating the market demand for intelligent XML switching technology, " said Ron Schmelzer, Senior Analyst, ZapThink. "It is clear that customers like CommWorks can leverage the power of XML routing systems such as Sarvega's XPE Intelligent XML Switch in order to provide a higher level of customer support service and reduce operational costs. ZapThink expects that many enterprises will be evaluating systems such as Sarvega's XPE as a solution to simplify and scale XML-based e-business applications." May 6, 2002 - CNet News.Com - "Search for Web services leads to Google" "No one has caught the attention of developers the way Google has," said Jason Bloomberg, analyst with industry consultants ZapThink. May, 2002 - MicroBanker - "Study Says XML Coming to Financial Services Soon" "We're starting to see some signs, particularly in the last few weeks, that financial institutions' spending on XML is starting to pick up," says Ronald Schmelzer, ZapThink senior analyst. April 24, 2002 - XML on Wall Street - "ZapThink Launches Web Services Practice Area" Jason Bloomberg, ZapThink consulting analyst, says, "ZapThink believes that the addition of a practice area focused on web services will help us to continue to serve our clients and subscribers with high-value, focused, pioneering, and credible research, analysis, and insight. April 22, 2002 - E-Business*Standards*Today - "Publication, research company to produce XML standards poster" IT magazine Application Development Trends and XML research company ZapThink announced today they will produce a poster that offers an overview of more than 135 key XML and Web services standards. Application Development Trends plans to distribute the poster as a supplement to its readers in the June 2002 issue. ZapThink will also distribute the poster at industry events and will offer the poster for sale on its Web site. April, 2002 - eWeek - "Web Services and Your Career" ZapThink, a research and analysis firm, sees the market for Web services platforms, application development suites and management tools expanding from $380 million in 2001 to more than $15.5 billion in 2005. April, 2002 - The Rational Edge - "Q&A with Industry Analysts" Jason Bloomberg, ZapThink: One thing to keep in mind is that we're in the dip of a curve right now. When you have explosive growth and then a crash, the period after the crash is the Golden Age of the current technology. Although people do lose confidence after the crash, it's actually the beginning of the best time. And that's what's happening now with information technology as a whole. We're in a recession, so everyone is circling the wagons and focusing on return on investment (ROI). People are thinking in terms of "Let's just make sure we are saving money and making money." They're not inclined to spend a lot of money on future technologies. April, 2002 - Credit and Collections Risk - "Tower of Babel" "The challenge with XML is not creating the document, but being able to exchange it," says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst for ZapThink, a Waltham, Mass. consultant. "Companies have to first be able to exchange XML documents internally before they exchange them externally. In some respects, the cart is being put before the horse." August 15, 2002 - CIO Magazine - The Promise of Web Services Web services are poised for rapid growth. ZapThink, a research firm focusing on XML, projects the Web services market to grow from $380 million in 2001 to $15.5 billion in 2005. April 12, 2002 - InfoWorld and CW360 - "Special Delivery for XML" Each startup appears to be addressing the problem of non-XML-aware networks with different approaches, said Ron Scmelzer [sic], senior analyst at ZapThink, an XML research company. "There is a fundamental difference between XML and Web protocols. The Web is just HTML, XML is content, and every piece is different," Scmelzer [sic] explained. April 8, 2002 - eWeek - "Following the Money" Banks, brokerage houses, and insurance and real estate companies spent $500 million on XML-related technologies last year and will invest an estimated $8.4 billion a year by 2005, more than any other industry, according to a recent XML market research report, "XML in Financial Services," by Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink LLC, a market research company in Waltham, Mass. April 8, 2002 - ZDNet - "Sun's Java vision at odds with Web services" Jason Bloomberg writes: Now, it's not clear how Sun's insistence on maintaining the old Java vision impacted their exclusion from the WS-I group directly. It is clear, however, that at its core, Sun's vision is at odds with the Web Services vision. In our opinion, this conflict is one of the main reasons why Sun has been marginalized in the Web Services arena. April, 2002 - Monster.com - "Web Services and Your Career" ZapThink, a research and analysis firm, sees the market for Web services platforms, application development suites and management tools expanding from $380 million in 2001 to more than $15.5 billion in 2005. April 1, 2002 - Nikkei BP BizTech (Japanese Language) - XML Data Storage Report Japanese Language feature. Also featured in ITWorld publication. March 26, 2002 - E-Business*Standards*Today Weekly Wire - "$4.1 billion market predicted for XML data storage by 2005" XML research analysts ZapThink LLC says the market for XML data storage technologies was only $75 million in 2000, but will grow to over $4.1 billion by 2005 March 26, 2002 - ASPStreet - "Market for XML Data Storage to Increase to $4.1 Billion by 2005" "Developers are taking advantage of XML's flexibility and extensibility in order to allow content to be shared, redistributed, and recombined easily," says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. "However, these attributes present challenges to current storage architectures. The way that XML is used will dictate the characteristics of the storage technology chosen." March 26, 2002 - ECOMWorld - "XML Data Storage Tech to Top $4B by 2005" "Developers are taking advantage of XML's flexibility and extensibility in order to allow content to be shared, redistributed and recombined easily," says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. "However, these attributes present challenges to current storage architectures. The way XML is used will dictate the characteristics of the storage technology chosen." March 21, 2002 - Application Development Trends - "Straight-Through Processing boosts XML spending" Expenditures for XML implementation in financial services will reach $8.5 billion by 2005, driven by the need for so-called Straight Through Processing (STP), according to a new study by ZapThink, a Waltham, Mass.-based consulting firm specializing in XML. March 20, 2002 - InsuranceTech.com - "News Briefs" Spending on XML-related technologies and Web services in 2002 by financial services companies should reach $985 million and is expected to grow to $8.3 billion by 2005, according to a study from ZapThink, LLC (Waltham, MA), an XML-focused industry analyst group. Financial services companies are using XML tools and technology for enterprise and B2B integration, financial document publishing, distribution, risk management and straight-through processing. March 21, 2002 - Financial Technology Network (CMP) - "XML Footprint Grows in the Financial Space" The need to integrate complex, heterogeneous systems, the movement to T+1 processing, and financial document preparation is spurring adoption of XML by financial Services enterprises, according to a report by ZapThink, an XML-focused industry analyst group. March 18, 2002 - Raqoon (Icelandic) - Fjármálafyrirtæki munu fjárfesta í XML tækni fyrir 8,3 milljarða dollara árið 2005 Greiningarfyrirtækið ZapThink spáir því að fjárfestingar fjármálafyrirtækja í XML tækni muni aukast mikið á næstu árum og verði allt að 8,3 milljarðar árið 2005 (miðað við tæplega milljarð í ár). Sjá nánar í frétt á Line56. March 15, 2002 - ECOMWorld - "The Financial Services Sector Gravitates to XML" "The financial services sector has long been an earlier adopter of emerging information technologies," says Ronald Schmelzer, ZapThink senior analyst. "A key part of their long-term strategy is to use XML to lower operating costs, increase customer satisfaction and revenue, and meet critical business goals, such as next-day trade settlement times and efficient financial document publishing." March 15, 2002 - Finance On Windows - "Financial XML spend booming, says research" The financial services sector is to spend US$8.3 billion on XML and Web services by 2005, according to ZapThink. The XML analyst reveals that the pressures of integrating complex, heterogeneous systems, the movement to T+1 processing, and financial document preparation is making near-term adoption of XML by financial services enterprises a reality. March 15, 2002 - E-Business*Standards*Today Weekly Wire - "Spending on XML in financial services to top $8.3 billion by 2005" Zapthink reports in 2001 financial services companies invested over $195 billion in information technology, with $985 million expected to be invested on XML technologies in 2002. March 15, 2002 - The Net Economy - "Fickle Forecasts" Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, thinks market projections are a necessity. "Numbers give ideas of trends and possible sizing, and they give an idea of where the market is heading," he says. March 15, 2002 - Line56 (top story) - "ZapThink Sees XML Future" "Financial companies have been the largest spenders in general of IT dollars," says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. "They're spending 35 percent of their IT budgets on integration, and this will probably continue for many years." Other big spending categories include life sciences and certain manufacturing sectors. March 4, 2002 - The Net Economy - "Web Services Fun and Games" Bigger service providers are wise to wait for the Web services market to develop, according to Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink. "People are just playing with Web services right now," he says. "But the moment big operators see that enterprises that are trying to use Web services externally are struggling, they should jump in." February 22, 2002 - CIO Insight - "When Will XML's Time Come?" In financial services, the picture is murkier. Plenty of financial service providers have implemented XML. But too many companies are trying to be the first to gain a competitive advantage with XML-based systems, and then force their own standards on their partners. The result: confusion, acrimony and duplication of effort, says Ron Schmelzer, founder and senior analyst with XML market researcher ZapThink LLC. January 29, 2002 - TheDeal.com - "Wacky World of Web Services" Current revenues from Web services are puny — just $380 million for all of 2001, according to estimates from ZapThink LLC, a Waltham, Mass.-based market research group. But ZapThink expects that to balloon to more than $15.5 billion once software services over the Internet become prevalent. January 28, 2002 - Private Equity Week - "LogicLibrary Checks Out $7.5M VC Round" It's no wonder. Gartner Inc. predicts the emerging Web services market will grow to $1.7 billion in 2003. Another industry watchdog, ZapThink LLC, projects that the market will be worth as much as $15.5 billion by 2005. January 22, 2002 - CW360 - "Making XML a shared experience" "XML is for companies with three problem areas," says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at XML research outfit ZapThink. "Companies with big integration issues, companies that have a lot of information and a ton of systems, and companies that make their money from information." January 18, 2002 - eWeek - "Standards may fix CRM integration" "Enterprises could use xCRL to mix and match customer information without the need to do hard-wired integration," said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink LLC, a research company in Waltham, Mass. January 2, 2002 - Application Development Trends - "Analysts: bull market for Web services" According to Schmelzer, the major drivers of Web Services are planned implementations to improve enterprise integration, both EAI and data integration; B2B integration, replacing aging EDI-based applications; and content management applications. January, 2002 - Homeland Security Journal - "Homeland Security Requires Internet-based Thinking -- Not Just Technology" "If the systems are legacy ones and a mixture of structured data, such as criminal records, and unstructured data, such as evidence, INS records, etc., XML is really good at encoding documents, by providing an arbitrary system. XML is the only unifying layer," says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, the only analyst group focused on XML. December, 2001 - Information Today - "XMLCities Unveils 'Non-Intrusive' XML Publishing Package" "XMLCities has a unique and valid approach to XML publishing that sets them apart in the industry," said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, Inc., an XML consulting firm. "Particularly effective for highly unstructured content like news, education, financial, and legal information, XMLCities' non-intrusive XML-conversion approach makes XML publishing an extremely beneficial solution for many organizations looking to integrate XML into their operations without requiring an overhaul of people." November 26, 2001 - The Net Economy - "Web Services Mind Games" "Web services just means bundling application functionality over XML," says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, a consulting company. "It's really just a computing paradigm." .. and a more meaty quote ... "Right now, IBM and Microsoft may be all about creating the platform," Schmelzer says. "But you'd better believe they're thinking about how to take the next couple of steps beyond it." November, 2001 - Interwoven Feature - "Talking XML" Simply put, XML is anywhere and everywhere that data is stored or exchanged, and as such, is pervasive. At the back end, XML is being used for eBusiness, content management, EAI, Web Services, and other exchanges. At the front end, XML is being used for dynamic page delivery, graphics, Web Services, and presentation-layer needs. Most of these implementations are invisible to the end-user. Think of XML as ASCII, COM, or client/server technologies - it's so ingrained in the applications, that users don't even know they're using it. Hopefully, users should see increased functionality, better reliability, new flexibility, lower cost of ownership, improved support, and a wider choice of tools and capabilities than they had seen before in their "closed" applications. October, 2001 - Application Development Trends - "All the News That's Fit to XML" News content providers would not be the only organizations to benefit from such a tool, according to Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, Inc., the Boston-based XML analyst and consulting firm. He says it would be "particularly effective for highly unstructured content" in other verticals including education, financial and legal. October, 2001 - Web Server Online - "Vector Graphics Spec Gets Nod" The pundits believe the fact that SVG is XML-based offers additional benefits. It provides a universal way for Web designers to work with images, text and data. It allows textual content of graphics to be searched, indexed and displayed in multiple languages. "You wouldn't be able to do it without XML," says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with the Waltham, MA-based and XML-focused analyst firm, Zapthink LLC. "The goal is to produce a vendor-neutral format for the exchange of vector graphics. We don't really have a good format that is vendor-neutral and platform-neutral that can be widely accepted, but that's what SVG is all about." September 9, 2002 - Mass High Tech - Cambridge startup has Clear Method for better XML Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst with the Waltham-based analyst firm ZapThink, said Water is a "seriously cool technology." ZapThink is dedicated specifically to XML and Web services. "We have to remember that the path to success is littered with seriously cool technology that never made it," Bloomberg said. "There's no question that it's a brilliant innovation, but there's no guarantee that it will take off. The real unknown here is ging to be Silvestri. It's going to be up to him to add the business aspect to the company." September, 2001 - Web Server Online - "WAP 2.0 Released" Analysts agree that XHTML support will benefit developers wanting to provide content to wireless devices and who have already created Web-based applications."[The WAP Forum] figures to have a successful platform to get developers. XHTML will do that. People know it, the tools are out there for that," says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst for research firm ZapThink LLC, Waltham, MA. With the release of XHTML support in WAP 2.0 "anyone that knows XHTML can be a wireless application developer," Schmelzer says. September, 2001 - High Tech Careers - "XML: Creating a Brave New World Wide Web" (a bit of a misquote, when taken out of context): "XML and e-business and e-commerce go hand in hand," Schmelzer said. "Its primary point of influence is the fact that users have no control over another trading partner's systems. Therefore, without XML and standards, there is no way to reliably conduct electronic business on a large scale. XML enables an easier and hopefully seamless exchange of business information, which is not possible without a structured language such as XML." August 16, 2001 - InteractiveWeek - "The XML Champs" The downturn in the economy hasn't slowed XML development as much as it has consolidated support behind the most durable XML technologies, says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst of ZapThink, an XML market research firm in Waltham, Mass. "Companies have been forced to focus on the technologies that have been determined to be most valuable," he says. "They're no longer willing to invest in three competing standards efforts." August, 2001 - Newsbytes - "What is this XML thing anyway?" This and many other misconceptions and criticisms of XML are covered in a ZapThink 50-page research report titled "Pros and Cons of XML," in which Schmelzer and his colleagues capsulize and analyze the debates raging at metadata conferences and on Internet bulletin boards. The provocative and sometimes amusing document can be downloaded without charge at ZapThink. July 25, 2001 - Application Development Trends - "On XML Meta-Misconceptions" In automotive terms, this would be like comparing a car engine to gasoline, says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, LLC, Waltham, Mass., (http://www.zapthink.com/). "I'm always surprised to see people compare XML and Java," he says. "Java's a programming language. You take a piece of Java code, you stick it in a machine and it does something. You take a piece of XML, you stick it in the machine and the machine looks at it and says, 'What do you want me to do with this?' You take the engine out of the car. You put gasoline in it and nothing is going to happen." July, 2001 - Web Server Online - "XHTML Goes Modular" Schmelzer is pleased with the efforts of the W3C but says the biggest issue relating to XHTML is adoption. "We have a bigger challenge with XHTML. Because people that are currently producing Web sites are not programmers, to get them to write XHTML compliant code might be difficult," he says. "First we have to get the tools vendor to make XHTML compliant code. Then we have to get the old version of the technology out of people's hands who are using FrontPage, which can create non-valid XHTML code. Those all have to be translated. The W3C is doing the right thing. With everything XML it is going to just take time." July 2001 - Application Development Trends - "XML Portal Adds XML Spec Listings" "This relationship with OASIS and XML.org is extremely important and very exciting to ZapThink," Schmelzer says. "It allows us to provide high-quality information regarding the current status of XML standards to a much wider audience. XML.org is a valuable, non-commercial resource for bringing XML communities together." July, 2001 - XML One 2001 San Jose Show Guide - "How will XML impact medical records" That question is good one, and quite a meaty one at that! It turns out that the healthcare industry, especially with respect to medical records, is being profoundly impacted by the developments in XML. Before we dive into the specific XML-based efforts that are going on with respect to healthcare, we should first figure out why the medical industry is being so impacted. June 29, 2001 - EP Topic News - "XML specifications online" US company ZapThink publishes quarterly standards reports and amongst those published is the XML report which covers over 400 XML Specifications, from over 300 organisations worldwide. Apparently a precis of the report will be published on XML.org, a XML portal site run by standards organistion (OASIS). This precis was not available when we visited XML.org but details of the full report are available from the Zapthink site, a report which features standards information on XML ranging from the XML Core Standards from W3C, IETF, DISA to key member companies and organisations and current standard status. June 27, 2001 - iSource Online - "Thinking about XML" ZapThink LLC today announced the launch of the first industry research and analysis focusing entirely on the Extensible Markup Language (XML). The focus of ZapThink is on producing research and analysis on XML and its adoption by businesses, scientific and academic institutions, and governments. June 18, 2001 - Wall Street Letter (print) - "XML Standards" The trouble is that every major player on Wall Street in Silicon Valley has ideas about how the data should be organized -- invariably in accordance with its own existing system -- because none[sic] wants its system to be rendered obsolete. "There are 400 different XML standards and there are 13 major standards for the finance industry," said Ron Schmelzer, from Zapthink, a firm that focuses exclusively on XML. June 13, 2001 - Gilbane Report (email) - "OASIS" OASIS announced that its recently expanded XML.org industry portal has been enhanced to include an online, categorized listing of the ZapThink XML Standards Report and Analysis. This new data features key details about more than 400 XML specifications from 300 organizations worldwide. XML.ORG offers detailed summaries from ZapThink's quarterly Standards Reports. Developers who require an in-depth analysis of a particular specification are able to purchase the full report through ZapThink. June 11, 2001 - eBizQ.net - "BizTalk Talks Up Vertical Standards" Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst for ZapThink, an analyst and consulting firm that reports on XML-based standards, agrees with Wascha: "In the beginning," he says, "there were XML standards. These XML standards had to do two things: specify a specific language of exchange for a particular industry as well as specify the way that those documents are exchanged. They had to specify the transport, routing and protocol layer because, without it, there would be no way to talk about insurance, as in the case of ACORD, or financial derivatives, such as fpML [Financial Products Markup Language]. Now that a common middle layer is being created, there is no reason for vertical industry standards to specify these layers. The standards that take advantage of this common middle and core tier--XML Schema, XML Protocol, XML Query, ebXML, etc.--will survive. Those that provide their own tier will probably die out." Schmelzer's report, the ZapThink XML Standards Watch, lists more than 400 current vertical and horizontal XML standards. June 1, 2001 - Web Server Online - "XML Schema Recommended" With the XML Schema now providing a standard method for identifying information, XML now receives a boost in its adoption on the corporate front. "DTDs pose a major barrier," says Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink, LLC, Waltham, MA, a research firm dedicating to studying XML. "Without [an] XML Schema, people can submit documents that are basically invalid for the purpose of business, but they may be valid in respect that they are an XML document. But they are not a valid business document." May 1, 2001 - PC Magazine - "What's holding up XML?" DTDs have been serving this function, but not well; They were designed to describe printed documents but not complex data structures such as relational databases. "With DTDs, the world is stuck trying to build skyscrapers from toothpicks and wood glue," says Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst at ZapThink, an organization that focuses entirely on XML standards. April 2, 2001 - InformationWeek - "Plug-and-Play Redefined" "Many of the deep, vertical standards have gone a long way to finally establishing a common dialogue for the exchange of business-to-business processes, so in these instances, we have a resounding 'yes' to the issue of delivering on the promise to simplify business-to-business communication. However, these are few and far between," says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst for ZapThink, an organization that specializes in XML reporting. April 2001 - eBizQ.net - "Web Services: Market Roundup" "The Web Services Tool Kit is the first implementation of IBM's architecture. IBM is trying to familiarize people with the issues around Web services and position IBM as a premier provider. Before they throw their weight behind the concept, they want to see how people develop and implement Web services because, right now, the concept of Web services is just that--a concept... This addition [of support for Web services] to WebSphere will help them maintain their position as an XML and Web services leader, instead of looking like they're in the back seat. While this indicates some willingness to weigh in on Web services, it also shows that they want to develop a well-thought-out strategy in their approach to Web services as part of a complete e-business approach." Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst, ZapThink April 2001 - eBizQ.net - "Web Services: The Next Generation of Distributed Computing" However, because Web services are loosely coupled components that communicate via XML interfaces, they aren't suitable for building entire applications. "For example", says Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst for ZapThink, an analyst and consulting firm that reports on XML-based standards, "you wouldn't want a desktop application composed entirely of Web service components."