Web services are touted as the ultimate software cafeteria plan. Shop among various vendors for best-of-breed solutions and swap out entire applications or application components as needed without installing anything new on your local machines. Sell your own best capabilities back to the marketplace as services themselves.So what Web services can insurers start using today?

The short answer is none, because these services as defined don't exist quite yet. However, all the big boys are laying offerings of infrastructure at the altar of XML-based Web services-Microsoft .Net, Sun ONE, IBM Websphere, Oracle 9i, BEA WebLogic, and Hewlett Packard E-Speak to name a half dozen. Of course, it wouldn't be the first time we've been promised a great new technology and been delivered vaporware, but independent analysts predict that the Web services model is a near mortal lock.

IT research and consulting firm Meta Group, for example, expects widespread tinkering with Web services-beginning as a substitute mechanism for accessing functions of currently distributed application components-within the year, and large-scale enabling of packaged business applications by 2003. The bottom line for insurers: Assume the extensive use of Web services by 2004. Giga predicts a similar timeline (see the graph "Whenever You're Ready").