Web services provide a standard means of interoperating between different software applications, running on a variety of platforms and/or frameworks.

While the concepts of Web services are aimed at providing a standard means to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network, they do not solve the problem of trust between service requesters and providers. A Trusted Component is defined as a reusable software element possessing specified and guaranteed property qualities. The highly reusable nature of a Web service emphasizes the need for a "trust ensuring" mechanism between the requester and the provider of the service.