Final answer:
The correct answer to the question is A) web services. These are software components that communicate over the internet using web communication standards like HTTP and WSDL within a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).
Step-by-step explanation:
Sets of loosely coupled software components that exchange information using standard web communication standards and languages are referred to as web services. These components allow different applications to communicate with each other over the internet. They utilize common protocols like HTTP and they define their interfaces in a language called WSDL (Web Services Description Language).
Web services are an essential component of the broader concept of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), which is an architectural pattern in the field of software design. SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a protocol that's commonly used by web services for exchanging structured information. It's essential to note that SaaS (Software as a Service), another option provided in the question, is a software distribution model and not a component communication framework like web services.