Service

1. In the Windows NT environment, it is a program that executes in the background, ready to perform an operation when required. Functioning like an extension to the operating system, a service is usually an unattended process that is initiated at startup. Services are listed in the Services control panel. Typical services are network handlers, protocol managers, or a scheduler that starts another process at a designated time. A daemon in Unix is analogous to a service.

2. In the Unix environment, refers to a background program