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The MIE allows communication with client programs through a number of web services.  Web services are essentially programming objects that are in the cloud.  Calls are made via the cloud to the web service, the method is performed, and results (if any) returned to the calling program.

The MIE's web services are built using Microsoft's .Net architecture.  Each web service is essentially a web site that represents a cloud-based set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).  Communication is via Secure Socket Layer (SSL / https)

In addition to communicating via https, ESI imposes additional security in the calling/response sequences.  An additional 128 bit 3DES encryption is optionally performed on the parameters passed, after having had the parameter data pass through ESI's proprietary compression/scrambling algorithm.  To support calling from external clients, ESI offers the MIEWebservices support module (miewebservices.dll).  The support module contains the calls necessary to package data for transport to the web service method, and then unpack the resulting data that comes back.