World Wide Grid (WWG) - A Challenge!

I'm going to put my marketing hat on for a minute....

It occurred to me that we techies have failed to create a name for the web service based Internet. You know, that thing that is service oriented, message driven, self-describing, standards-based, loosely coupled - yet structured? Roughly, it is the universal services network sitting on top of the Internet and the wireless Internet shooting XML specified messages around according to specifications driven by the non-profits and the computing giants. For a while people called it, Web II or Web V2 - but those have faded away. Today, I propose "World Wide Grid" or "WWG" as the name for the aforementioned network.

"Huh?", you say...still don't get it?? OK, one more attempt, it is the combination of the WS-I Basic Profile (SOAP, UDDI, WSDL, XML Schema) + the new WS-I Security Profile + an addressing & routing scheme (WS-Routing, WS-Addressing) + a reliable messaging scheme (WS-Reliability) and a transaction scheme (WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction). These protocols will be complemented by a series of protocols that will be optional. The optional protocols will be utilized in a "Must-Understand" scenario between conversing parties. This will include everything from billing, provisioning and SLA's, to logging.

But why the WWG? Doesn't "grid" sound too much like a high-performance, distributed computing grid, like the efforts at Globus? Maybe - but before too long the "low-performance" and "high-performance" grids will have a significant amount of overlap and may likely become one grid. What about the OGSA efforts? That's easy - many people (like IBM marketing) tend to use grid to mean "run-time dynamic allocation of resources (CPU, Disk, Memory, Network) - this is clearly part of a grid - the part that many companies will promote to customers as having a near term advantage (cost savings through server consolidation), but it only touches on the real opportunity of creating a secure, messaging network where anyone in the world can participate. Call me old fashioned, but what many call grids are not much more than advanced versions of MPI - - and this in my opinion is missing the boat.

Back to marketing - I imagine the T.V. commercial where Bill Gates, Tim Berners Lee, Larry Ellison, Scott McNealy and Sam Palmisano stand up together and tell the world that they are backing, creating and selling the next web, the WWG. They go on to explain that it will connect every business, enable extended supply chains and create efficiencies that have only been dreamt about... I then imagine the NASDAQ once again being a popular place to make investments.

Web services are a network. And the network needs a name.

I know that many people read my blog - and many of you blog as well. So here is my challenge - support me in creating a new name for this next generation network -- OR -- make a better (or different) recommendation. Blog it and let's revisit.