The trend in service standardization has moved away from specifying individual services, via the classification of service toolkits, to the concept of defining a service mediation architecture. The prime objective of service mediation is the proliferation of innovative end-user applications by means of network transparency and abstracted network capabilities. This implies requirements alignment and also dependencies and harmonization between various involved standards bodies. This paper addresses the impact of these implications, as well as the latest developments and directions in service mediation standards and why and how these are different from traditional standards with respect to issues like conformance and backwards compatibility. The paper homes in on Parlay and Open Service Access (OSA) in particular and looks at how Parlay/OSA capabilities are evolving and how they relate to the Web Services model. The recent embracing of JAIN∗ and Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) as technology realization of the common Parlay/OSA interface definitions are also discussed. © 2003 Lucent Technologies Inc.