Web Services的确切定义是什么？（高分）

[dragonleon]

目前我只查到W3C在2003年8月公布的最新定义是
[Definition: A Web service is a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a machine-processable format (specifically WSDL). Other systems interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP-messages, typically conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialization in conjunction with other Web-related standards.]
哪位高手能翻译一下？我翻译的很生硬，感觉不好

IBM和微软的定义又是什么？