As hype builds around Web services, industry veterans are quick to inject reality into the discussion, noting that today’s technologies are simply a resurfacing of well-established computer science practices. As Sun fellow James Gosling pointed out at the InfoWorld Next-Generation Web Services conference last week, “RPC [Remote Procedure Call] was a good idea in the 1970s, and it is now, too!” But building off the accomplishments of the past should not dampen enthusiasm for today’s flourish of activity. For instance, a crop of ISV startups indicates some vibrancy in a relatively dismal capital funding environment. And equally important, new blood is targeting age-old problems in IT. Yet despite new activity, the complexity and cost of developing, deploying, and maintaining business applications continue to dog the industry. To the jaded CIO or CTO, the latest buzzwords around Web services are so much noise until they solve these business problems. The IT industry’s agreement around XML-based Web services standards and a messaging-based method for connecting applications is a step in the right direction. Soon, all major software companies will support these technologies and the attention on Web services will turn to the applications that address core IT issues. Today, however, some of the discussion is still at the infrastructure level. Our lead news story this week focuses on efforts to boost the reliability of Web services protocols. Businesses aim to use the Internet as a deployment platform, but for that vision to be a reality, its very foundations need to be fortified. So while the pundits agree that there’s nothing new under the sun and the VCs predict the timing of the inevitable consolidation, the software industry is trying to reinvent itself again. Do you see Web services as a fundamental industry shift? Write to me at martin_lamonica@infoworld.com. Software Development