The present invention relates to a system and methodology providing virtual and remote component interactions in a networked industrial control environment. One or more components of an industrial control system are defined as a web service, wherein the components cooperate to support distributed controller functionality in all or portions of a virtual operating framework. For example, the components can include processing, logic, I/O and status components of an industrial control system. Standard and commonly available interfaces describe controller functionality in terms of the services, whereby controller applications are constructed via the components and associated interfaces. This can include discovery of other related services and employment of common web protocols to communicate between the services.