Spotted on Loosely Coupled:

The bad news for the IT industry is that CIOs have realized they can spend less and achieve more, using web services. Instead of investing in new systems, they want to get more out of the systems they've already got. Here's what they've been saying at InfoWorld's CTO Forum this week:

• "We've got to rationalize our investments. We've been spending $4 billion a year for years. We need to get more out of it," says Merrill Lynch's chief technology architect, Rick Carey.
• "When we looked at our core assets, we had lots of services our customers were not using. The problem was [the services] were not flexible and convenient enough," says senior Verizon IT executive Luis Lando.

The really bad news is that they can expose and link those web services without having to invest in expensive new integration systems. They don't even have to buy application servers, according to Cape Clear founder Annrai O'Toole

Hah! Anyone who thinks that exposing via web services will be easier than - say CORBA - hasn't tried it both ways.....