Key web standards that allow widespread interoperability between companies and partners have yet to be developed, and will hinder the technology's uptake for another year.

The next major shift for web services will come when quality of service (QoS) standards are in place to speed inter-company communications. But these will not be ready before the end of 2003.

However, speakers at this week's Web Services for Business conference at Olympia warned that companies should be ready to ride the next wave.

"We are evolving towards open standards integration. For now, web services is being used to solve tactical point-to-point problems," said Oracle 9i product manager Mohamad Afshar.

But he insisted that QoS is needed, for instance to send and receive purchase orders from different companies, ensuring also that they do not reach the wrong company.

Web services has been making steady progress within enterprises for integration using the well-established low-level XML, Soap, WSDL and UDDI specifications.

The key security standard is likely to be next, which is well advanced and now lodged with the Oasis standards body. But the other QoS standards for reliable messaging and co-ordination are still in early draft form.

Peter Bell, business strategy consultant at Microsoft's .Net developer group, believes that the QoS standards will all arrive before the end of the year, and that users should implement web services standards as an investment in the future.

"There will be a bigger software market if the systems work together and attract business value much quicker. The cost is not great because you don't need to start with a grand plan," he said.