Web services could be written in Perl, but I don't know of any application servers like Tomcat, Silverstream, or Websphere that are geared for Perl. Don't count on Perl being a major asset if you want to go into the website business. But just because nowdays Java, C#, .net or whatever is more popular for webservices you are wrong to conclude that the time for Perl has passed. It hasn't. Perl predates the internet hype. Perl is popular among system admins, and will remain so. But you won't get a job as a sysadmin just because you know Perl. You become a sysadmin because you know your stuff - the fact you use Perl to do your work is of minor importance.

I've had quite a lot of jobs the last 6 years. In all the jobs I used Perl. Only one job, which I had for about 10 weeks, was as a "Perl programmer". The rest were just jobs where I was using Perl to do my work - I could have done it with Python or C as well, would that have been my preference.

Abigail