The key to services is that they have standard, published interfaces. At Microsoft, services are central to its .Net initiative. Through .Net, computers, devices, and services are intended to collaborate directly with each other. The company expects .Net will let businesses offer their products and services in a way that allows customers to embed them in their own electronic fabric. IBM calls its services initiative Web Services.
Services are software, but with a lot of reuse.
Services are central to IBM's E-business strategy. Credit-card validation becomes a service provided over the Internet. Oracle sees services as loosely coupled software components running over the Internet using HTTP and XML as the key protocols, says Bill Dwight, Oracle's VP of Java tools. The new services, whatever their underlying technology may be, will be tightly wrapped in XML to function as a service, he says. At this point, the vendors primarily want to sell their component tools and component frameworks, which are central to building services.