Jump onto Web Services and Give Your IT Career a Boost

All Industry giants – IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, Bea, and other companies amazingly agree that web services technology will change the future. You don’t see this kind of agreement very often in this industry. Web Services technology is real now. People no longer talk it as another over-hyped trend.

What Makes Web Services So Hot

It’s the big promise – web services is able to transform the way companies conduct business and communicate. This transformation is significant enough to let this technology dominate the IT industry’s future. As Bill Gates of Microsoft stated, “Web services are the key to productivity that will span the entire economy.” The staging of web services will likely bring revolution and innovation in every aspect of business and communication.

Web Services – What’s Inside

Web services standardize the way of connecting disparate applications, systems, and devices over the Internet. There are 4 primary standards:

XML (Extensible Markup Language)

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)

UDDI (Universal Description Discovery and Integration)

WSDL (Web Services Description Language)

Based on these standards, we can build the web services model with Interoperability, that means consumers, business partners, customers and others would all communicate and exchange data seamlessly, no matter what the device or platform.

Web Services on the Way to Mature

The web services technology, although has passed the early stages of development, is still a work in progress. It may take couple of more years to mature. There are more details in the standards to settle and interoperability issues to deal with. As IT vendors are investing huge capitals to build platforms, make development tools, and specify common interoperability standards, the web services technology will keep advancing in exponential rate.

Web Services in the Career Path

The evolving of web services will have a big impact on IT professionals and IT careers. For most of us – developers, programmers, architects, system administrators and others, it is a wonderful opportunity for career boosting. Very soon a lot of business systems will be built on web services technology, that means a lot of projects and a lot of jobs. The potential for long-term growth is very promising in this area.

IT professionals, especially developers, system integrators, and data architects should plan to get involved in Web services. In the near future, all major development projects will be constructed using the Web services paradigm. Thus, like it or not, you’ll have to face this technology. You’d better begin to prepare for it now. Here’s what you can do for planning your career path with web services:

1. Familiarize yourself with these 4 key standards. Get a deep understanding on XML and SOAP.

2. Obtain skills on web services platforms. You should specify your web service expertise on either .NET platform or Java platform.

3. Read couple of technical books in your spare time. There are tons of books on this topic – .NET web services, J2EE web services, XML, SOAP, etc.

4. Learn to use web services development tools and management tools made by leading web services vendors – IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun, Bea.

5. Download and install one or two web services development tool kits from top-tier web services vendors and play with them to get hands-on experience.

6. Look for job opportunities in major web services tool and platform vendors and join their teams to build the web services world.

7. Look for job opportunities in startup companies with focus on web services related products and services.

8. Watch for new web services projects within your organization. Ask for joining the project by offering your knowledge and expertise.