Web services themselves are made available by service publishers. Typically, the service publisher makes its web service available through a web-based registry that maintains a directory of available services that you can access. A number of websites provide such a directory, including:

• X Methods at http://www.xmethods.net
• IBM Business Registry at https://uddi.ibm.com/ubr/registry.html
• Microsoft UDDI registry at http://uddi.microsoft.com/default.aspx

These registries use the Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) service, an open, e-commerce service registry that provides a forum for businesses to describe themselves and the goods or services they can provide to other businesses. A group of companies, called operators, maintain the registry. The operators have pledged to share all public information about registrants among themselves and with users of the service, and to maintain inter-operability among the multiple peer nodes of the UDDI service network. In addition to public web services, there are also private UDDI registries available on a subscription basis.

The UDDI specification is based on existing Internet standards, ensuring that it is platform and implementation neutral.