In one sense, Web services applications are like other applications. They represent a code base developed by a team of engineers. This code base needs to go through a methodological development life cycle, followed by testing and quality assurance, before it is finally released.
Frequently, however, Web services are not new applications at all, but rather carefully crafted message-based interface layers on top of existing systems and applications. New applications may be composed of Web services, or the services may be orchestrated into new business processes.
Given this evolutionary approach to application design and deployment, Web services and applications and business processes using Web services have a different set of provisioning and management concerns that enterprise architects must consider.
