Web Services represents a new platform where the web is used not only for information exchange but also as a new resource to create value added business services. Web Services are self-contained, self-describing, modular business applications or a set of software standards that enable systems in different companies to interact with each other or securely expose their business logic beyond the firewall over the Internet.

Web Services is an emerging technology driven by the will to securely expose business logic beyond the firewall. Web services is Internet or other IP based network applications built with four emerging standards: XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI.It provides integration of disparate web applications as well as data and services over the Internet. Companies can encapsulate existing business processes, publish them as services, search for and subscribe to other services, and exchange information throughout and beyond the enterprise. They will not need to discard or architecturally modify existing core business or legacy applications, or to move data and functions into a single operating environment to achieve integration and interoperability and is all about interoperability of applications.

Web services are important to business because they enable systems in different companies to interact with each other, more easily than before. With businesses needing closer cooperation between suppliers and customers, engaging in more joint ventures and short-term marketing alliances, pursuing opportunities in new lines of business, and facing the prospect of more mergers and acquisitions, companies need the capability to link up their systems quickly with other companies.

Because Web services are written according to standards, all parties work from the same basic design. Companies then add value and business advantage to the basic design to meet the needs of their customers. Web services provide the basic messaging and service-description functions for this kind of electronic relationship, but the suppliers could build on these basic features to provide better services to the customer. And companies can extend these capabilities to other trading partners, since they are built on standards.

Also, because Web services are built on standards, they make it possible for many systems developers to enter the market, which increases competition and brings down the costs. The competition among vendors also encourages more innovation in the products and services offered to business customers. And basing systems on standards helps prevent being locked-in to a specific vendor or type of computer or software.

Web services encompass a vision of a fully integrated computing network that include PCs, servers, handheld devices, programs, applications and network equipment, all working together. This network can perform distributed computation with the best-matched device for the task and deliver the information on a timely basis in the form needed by the user.

The industry is very far from the deal of instant connectivity and interoperability even in this era of the Internet. After a decade of evolution, the Web environment has acquired a definite server-centric flavor where data often is locked in a database vault, and served through the straw of the last-mile dialup connection, and even the most powerful PC is underutilized, having been reduced to the role of a dumb terminal running a Web browser.

Integration, especially for intranets could be accomplished by writing a program that goes upstream from the Web site and pulls out the needed data, bypassing the presentation tier, i.e., the Web servers. Today, this re-plumbing is usually a custom job that takes weeks or months to accomplish. Ideally this integration would happen in real time, dynamic fashion.