Conclusions

Technology that is considered to be a strategic benefit today will become par for the course tomorrow. As users become accustomed to using the Web to access information about their bank accounts, investment portfolios, and utility bills, they will begin to take that ability for granted. The challenge for IT systems architects is to build a system that can not only meet the needs of today, but anticipate the needs of tomorrow. Leveraging the power and flexibility of XML as an underlying data format can make this job much simpler.