>In my opinion, for Web Services technology be useful for *companies* they need to have the *need* to share some information with external clients.

You've never left on a business trip and wanted any data left back at home or the office?

>I know this is an over-simplification of the whole web services concept. Yet, I think the base reason why they are not catching up as fast as people had wished is because they are not needed as much as people thought.

This is why I tried to make a point about the lack of vision. Does anyone "need" a TV? I really doubt it. Yet most people would say it changed the world. However at first it was nothing more than radio with pictures. Thats what they knew, so thats how they did it. But as we can now see, TV has taken on a life and function of its own. Something that the early TV Pioneers could not even imagine.

I see Web Services following this same path. Today what most people consider when they think Web Services is just another Win32 client for existing applications. In that case, yeah, Web Services are a joke. But hopefully Web Services will find their place (and hopefully it will have a more positive impact than Television did!)