I. Overview
After a description of the rapidly expanding acceptance of the service-orientation paradigm and its essential characteristics (chapter 2), an introduction is given on how service-orientation can be applied in the device space and implemented using standard Web Services communication protocols (chapter 3). Chapter 4 then describes the communication framework, based on device-level service orientation, proposed by the SIRENA project for networking of industrial automation devices, discusses the anticipated benefits of this approach, presents initial results of its experimental usage and outlines directions for future work to be perforned.