Initially, UDDI was both an organization as well as a specification. The UDDI organization was initially championed by IBM, Ariba and Microsoft, but in June of 2002, the group transferred it's control to OASIS.

The UDDI specification identifies a mechanism for providing a service repository and means for populating, retrieving and replicating the information within the repository. UDDI attempts to leverage Internet and web service standards when possible. It provides a means to describe trading partners and the services they provide. UDDI is often viewed as the, "yellow-pages" of web services.

The most common version of UDDI is currenty UDDI 2.0, which is part of the WS-Basic Profile. It superceded UDDI 1.0 and it is anticipated that UDDI 3.0 will be the successor to 2.0.

UDDI also identifies the concept of a public registry as well as private registries. The UDDI public registry is called UBR.