When Web services first emerged as a distributed computing alternative, there were two core standards associated with it: WSDL (common interface standard) and SOAP (common messaging format). However, as the first Web services began emerging in early adopter enterprises, many concerns were voiced: "If everything is openly exposed using a common interface standard communicating over HTTP, how will I control access to my services?" "Given the simplicity of the SOAP envelope, how will a message expose its desired destination?" "Given the inherent unreliability of Internet-standard protocols, how can I guarantee that messages are delivered in support of business-critical applications?"

Increasingly, additional standards have emerged to tackle most of these issues, such as WS-Security and WS-Addressing (arguably the two most widely adopted WS-* standards).

More recently, WS-ReliableMessaging has emerged to provide a standard means to enable a variety of advanced reliable messaging techniques. In a nutshell, WS-ReliableMessaging defines a transport-independent protocol that enables a variety of reliable messaging techniques between distributed services, including "at least once" delivery, "exactly once" delivery, and "in order" delivery. WS-ReliableMessaging has been coauthored by IBM, Microsoft, Tibco, and BEA. Support for the standard has begun emerging in products from established market makers, in addition to certain startup vendors.