Countering the public praises being heaped on Web services technology lately by various IT dignitaries, a Serena Software Inc. executive on Monday had a less ambitious outlook for the concept.
Web services will be valuable for linking components within corporate firewalls, said Mark Woodward, president and CEO at San Mateo, Calif.-based change management software vendor Serena, during a speech at the company's SerenaXChange Global user conference here. He added, however, "This idea of building large components over the Internet, I just don't buy it."
Woodward did stress that Serena supports Web services technology, adding, for example, that security will be important for Web services. Web services is one of the focuses of the user conference.
Woodward also outlined the company's technology direction for 2002, which is about refining business process controls and merging IT and business goals. The company is endeavoring "to allow [users] to have better control over everything in IT," to boost functions such as management and reporting, said Woodward.
Functions such as role-based, single point of control for business processes are part of the company's vision, Woodward said. The company is working on defining processes both on modular and individual levels, he said.