This week we focus on Web Services, a topic often associated with SOA, but not quite the same. While SOA is an architectural concept, which we covered in detail last week, web services is more of an implementation technology.

Now, it’s probably quite well-known that Web Services are an open standards-based way of creating and offering applications. It is about exchanging structured documents that contain different amounts of information as well as information about that information, architecture of participation, applications as platforms, and creating rich user experiences. Having said this, the major traction that they have gained is attributed to the ease with which they can be implemented and their accessibility from any platform, both locally and remotely.

Making an application platform and technology independent, with the ability to talk to other applications and share data and services among these applications, is one reason as to why Web Services are widely considered by SaaS providers. No doubt, a VB or .NET application can talk to Java web services and vice versa. The standardized protocols that they adopt for communication ensure them with wide range of choices and reduced cost of communication. And their support for other communication mechanisms like FTP, other than SOAP, over HTTP or HTTPS, further strengthen their stand in this realm. They are self-describing applications and support different technologies such as B2B, EAI, EDI etc.

From a SaaS perspective, Web Services render automatic discovery mechanism which helps the customers find the services they require from a provider easily. This in turn has, substantially increased the revenue of the provider by exposing its available services to others, and by partnering with other providers and third–party organizations.