Hype is a very useful marketing tool. You come up with a new idea, something with real potential. You go out and raise awareness, you evangelize about how this new technology will revolutionize business. If you market it well, you create a buzz. The next thing you know, you've got lots of people talking about it. New businesses start popping up. Money starts to flow. Suddenly you're on your way to endless riches...at least for a little while.

But there's a problem with hype. If you're not careful, the idea will get exaggerated. Expectations can get totally out of hand. What starts out as a good idea can turn into something totally unattainable. Then, if you don't deliver on the hype within an unrealistically short time frame, the public begins to doubt that the technology will ever work. And then the bubble bursts.

Crashing and Burning
There are lots of examples of exaggerated hype leading to "crash and burn." Look at peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, for instance: P2P was all the rage 18 months ago. Now it's hard to find anyone concentrating on P2P. The money has dried up. It's not that P2P is a bad idea - in fact, it's a great idea. But it's hard to create a viable business model based on P2P technology alone. I'm still waiting for someone to use P2P to solve a real business problem that can't be solved more easily using some other technology.

You might also recall that 18 months ago, Bluetooth was also the talk of the town. Every device imaginable would support Bluetooth-based wireless communications. To date, there are only about 350 products that are Bluetooth-qualified, and very few of them are shipping. The technology just hasn't lived up to its promise of offering a simple, robust, low power, short-range wireless solution at an affordable price. The public has just about given up hope that it will ever happen.

Whatever Happened to 3G?
And where are WAP, third generation wireless technology (3G), and the ubiquitous "Wireless Web"?

Wireless LANs are great, SMS messaging is really useful. But whatever happened to always-on, totally mobile, broadband, Internet access? I remember swallowing the hype that said that 3G, operating at speeds of up to 2MB/sec, would be fully deployed by 2001. People would be able to use a wireless handset to interface with personal information management systems and corporate applications from anywhere in the world.

Maybe I just live on the wrong continent, since I'm told that 3G is indeed being deployed in Asia and in Europe. But here in the States, we're just barely getting access to SMS and GPRS. I'm also definitely having trouble grappling with the cost of always-on wireless Web service - particularly when you consider how limited that service is. It's rare to find someone using a cell phone, or even a two-way pager, to interface with corporate applications.

I'm worried that Web services technology might also be in danger from over-hype. I cringe every time I hear someone telling me that I'll be able to use the public UDDI registry to programmatically discover a new materials supplier and dynamically place an order without human-to-human interaction. It's just not going to happen. It's not a problem with the technology. The technology can do it today. It's a matter of business behavior. You just don't order materials without verifying the validity or quality of the supplier.

Business Model Sorely Needed
Okay. So what about consumer-oriented services? How about traffic reports or restaurant guides or sports scores? As a consumer, I'm probably willing to bypass the due diligence process for this type of service provider, so perhaps I'd be willing to dynamically discover and invoke one of these services. But then I ask myself, who's going to pay for these services? Will they be sponsored by advertising? That business model doesn't seem to work very well anymore. Will the consumer have to pay for them? If so, dynamic discovery and invocation doesn't seem quite so viable anymore.

The Future Will Come...Just Not Yet
So perhaps it's time to rein in our expectations a little bit. Web services technology is very powerful. It allows us to integrate our systems more easily than ever before, and thereby helps us improve efficiency and reduce costs. It can offer real business benefits. Let's take advantage of those benefits now, rather than getting distracted by some unrealistic future fantasy.

Perhaps someday - maybe even in less than five years - I'll be able to walk into a room and use my Bluetooth-enabled mobile viewer to dynamically discover a local video-on-demand service that uses a peer-to-peer content delivery network to stream the video to my viewer over 4G wireless broadband, while automatically charging the usage fee to my financial provider as defined by my identity service.

It's always fun to dream about the future. But let's just make sure that we keep things in perspective.

Author Bio:
Anne Thomas Manes is the CTO of Systinet, a Web services infrastructure company. Anne is a recognized industry spokesperson and has published on a range of technology issues. ATM@SYSTINET.com