Whether you think that writing a service is for you or not (let alone in Perl). It is true that more and more is being exposed as a service. Certainly in Java and .NET (primarily C#).

To me, that would be reason enough. Services are in the current buzzword top ten and knowing how to interface is not only good for your CV its good for keeping Perl in your programming shop (personal experience attests to this). Speaking from my personal experience, I have had programmers want to interface to my code or have their data exposed correctly and using services has been the key. Sure its a bit bloated and is really just XML over HTTP but its standardised and platform independant.

Two strong arguments IMHO.