Web services standards creation is moving up the stack steadily. Product support is outpacing the standards processes and vendors are working from draft specifications in a race to provide important functionality; therefore current products and implementations may need to evolve as the industry comes to agreement on final standards. Even so, it is now safe to use Web services for integration projects, since most development and middleware products will shield customer implementations from specification changes. Web services should be leveraged today for application integration and programming model unification. New product plans and business connections being developed should consider Web services as part of the solution. This Web-friendly component model is rapidly maturing and steps should be taken to ensure a smooth transition into Web services technologies. Monitoring its progress closely, planning for its integration and adopting a service-oriented architecture design style will help ensure a strong position for moving into the Web services direction in the future. In addition, looking for potential services and developing those components now so they can be exposed when it is appropriate to make them available to the Web services community will accelerate Web services rollout.