Are Web services finally ready to deliver?

Web services, in brief, are a framework of software technologies designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. Companies on different systems can use Web services to exchange information online with business partners, customers, and suppliers. Various standards organizations and industry consortia are developing Web services specifications without a unifying authority. Organizations such as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), the Liberty Alliance Project, and the Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) have developed or reviewed numerous standards. A primary goal of Web services is to unlock a new generation of e-commerce applications.