The emergence of web services as a common communications bus has "profound implications." The next generation of biometric devices will not only need to be intelligent, secure, tamperproof, and spoof resistant, but first, they will need to be interoperable. These envisioned devices will require a communications protocol that is secure, globally connected, and free from requirements on operating systems, device drivers, form factors, and low-level communications protocols. WS-Biometric Devices is a protocol designed in the interest of furthering this goal, with a specific focus on the single process shared by all biometric systems-acquisition.