Fragmentation May Inhibit XML Adoption

By Darryl K. Taft, Crn

While XML is emerging as a key language of B-to-B commerce, fragmentation will be an inhibitor for XML adoption in general, a GartnerGroup XML expert said.

Despite the fragmentation, GartnerGroup expects the XML uptake to be quite rapid, said Sanjeev Varma, a research director at the company.

Varma spoke at GartnerGroup's "AD Summit 2000: Application Development in the New Economy" conference in New Orleans this week.

He predicts that through 2002, no single XML protocol standard will be used in more than 5 percent of all new XML applications. But by 2005, only two or three protocol standards will be used to create the protocols expressed in more than 90 percent of all new XML applications.

In addition, Varma said through 2002, at least 75 percent of successfully deployed XML schemas will have been designedby individual enterprises or industry-specific trading groups. The remaining schemas will come from industry standards bodies and vendor-led initiatives, he said.

No single group now has enough clout to make its XML schema the dominant one, Varma said.

By the end of this year, however, 75 percent of the Fortune 500will be using XML in at least one prototype project -- and 25 percent in at least one production IT project -- involving application integration, he said.

Varma said XML is useful because it has little comparison as a comprehensive portable data standard. It can be used to complement EDI in some systems, but it is not the death of EDI, he said.

"There are instances where one might be more appropriate than the other," Varma said.

Still, he predicts the growth rate for EDI and EDI services will decline to about 10 percent by 2004 from 30 percent in 1999. And by 2002, XML/EDI will account for 30 percent of EDI transactions, with a further 30 percent supported via XML/EDI-to-EDI gateways, he said.

"You'll use EDI in cases where transaction throughput is really important," Varma said. "You'll use XML where you need to automate processes."

Varma also predicts that by 2003, 80 percent of application-to-application traffic that passes over public networks will be in XML format.