Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for providing and interacting with a centralized wake service. A server-side wake service is provided that is operable to allow applications to subscribe to the wake service. The wake service receives a wake request directed to a particular computing device from a particular one of the applications. The wake request is forwarded from the wake service to a client-side communication service on the particular computing device if forwarding is determined to be appropriate. When the client-side communication service on the particular computing device receives the wake request while in a reduced power mode, the computing device wakes up and an appropriate response is determined.