"Ten years ago, businesses were just starting to use computers. Five years ago, most businesses did not have a web presence.
"Today, computers and the Internet are integral parts of every business. From supply chain management to maintaining client relations, computers have penetrated every nook and cranny of businesses. Many companies are trying to bridge that next step and leverage business to business communications to help them stay competitive in today's fast paced market place.
"However, the application to application communications standards to this point have been extremely fragile and proprietary. This is where SOAP comes in. SOAP is an open standard that is based on XML, a data language that is understood by all modern platforms. This opens the door for any business, regardless of the platform that they are running on to communicate with any other business, regardless of the platform that they are running on.
"Microsoft has been extremely involved with the SOAP standard and their implementation of .NET Web Services is a turning point for them. .NET Web Services are completely compliant with the SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2 specification. At the time of this writing, .NET is the only full scale implementation of the SOAP 1.2 specification.

"The .NET Web Services Bootcamp is dedicated to teaching you how to implement Web Services with .NET that will be accessible to any type of Web Services client and Web Service Clients that will be able to communicate with any type of Web Services Server."

.NET Web Services Bootcamp

-- Josh Holmes