The trouble with this guy is that he:
1) Thinks "web services" matter.
2) Doesn't understand how pathetically easy they are to build.

Clay Shirky does a good job of stating the obvious about web services in this article.

And did this guy fail to actually read the specs of the tech he's pushing? The reason things like SOAP are in XML is so you don't have to use Java to interact with them. The idea that you somehow require Enterprise Java Beans to make a web service shows just how much some people will believe what they're told about technology. I watched Matt Sargeant make a web service at TPC with perl in about 2 minutes while a live audience looked on. Given how much traffic most web services are likeley to get, the laptop he ran it on was massive overkill.