Keshav notes it's a difficult problem, but says there will be lots of opportunities for the vendors and service providers who figure out the right business model and delivery mechanism. More important, as online marketplace, intercompany collaboration, and E-commerce grow, IT may be able to use services to deploy more flexible systems that are easier to use and integrate. Already companies such as Bekins Co. in Hillside, Ill., are exploring the use of services to extend their applications to prospective customers. Software services are discrete pieces of code that reside on the network and perform a specific function. The definitions evolved yet again into distributed server-side components that would execute among different computer systems.
Services provide higher levels of abstraction than standard components.
As such, they're easier to use and to deploy. 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.