Web services have always been there in theory which is simply a method of getting web pages from several platforms to inter-connect, share data and understand each other in their sharing of that data. There used to be specific applications on web sites that were restricted in their abilities to inter-connect over the internet with others on the same network. This has been long understood by large scale industry who are seen as the first benefactors of the said internet technology who can now have several branches that have their own data that might be needed by some other branch processed there and returned to all the branches for use without having a central multi-million dollar computer to do all the work.