A series of articles that examines, in great depth, the fundamental principles of the Web Services Architecture and also pays attention to the core promise of interoperability that that drives this new, quickly evolving, emerging technological paradigm. It begins by taking a quick look at just how far Web services have come, what the current playing field looks like in terms of tool availability, and offering some insight into just how far we have to go in order to make this exciting new set of technologies viable and competitive.