The debate over the potential uses of web services technologies continues to rage among IT market analysts. Gartner, for example, forecasts that the use of web services will grow rapidly, as stated in its 'Top 10' predictions for 2002. Although they recognise that the concept has encountered some criticism, Gartner analysts say that web services – where dispersed software components search for and execute various business processes over the web – will overcome objections and by 2004 will become the dominant method for the delivery of applications in Fortune 2000 organisations.

In contrast, industry analyst Ovum is a fierce critics of web services. It accuses middleware vendors of "hyping up" web services, which it claims "at best will form the technical basis for some rudimentary integration tools". Ovum says that as a result of commercial constraints, web services will end up being managed by hosted service providers – far from the utopia of online collaboration suggested by many vendors.