Commissioner Liikanen to speak on Web and Grid services, and semantic Web at IST Diffuse Final Conference

How? Web Services connect computers and devices with each other using the Internet to exchange data and combine data in new ways. The key to Web Services is on-the-fly service creation through the use of loosely coupled, reusable software components. In the world of Web Services, seamless IT services span entire value chains and enable and support business missions and tasks rather than dictate them.

Definitions of Grid Services are only emerging and still vary, but they revolve around the idea of service creation and delivery through co-ordinated resource sharing and problem solving in dynamic, multi-institutional virtual organisations. In the world of Grid Services, large-scale distributed computing is available on demand and as required for changing groups of people to interact and collaborate within new forms of organizations, based on novel concepts of sharing a vast array of resources.

According to Tim Berners-Lee, the Semantic Web is a computer system, a distributed machine which should function so as to perform socially useful tasks. The WWW should be useful not only for human-human communication, but also that machines would be able to participate and help. The key to the Semantic Web is to express information in a machine processable form.

There is however no certainty that promising technologies will deliver on their promises. Arguably, competition between technologies or families of technologies makes success even harder and how should "success" be defined? Moreover, why is it important that certain technologies need to succeed? Who make the decisions and who are empowered to do so? As technologies become interwoven with the fabrics of economic activities and the functions of society in general, those technologies with transformative potentials raise profound issues in many different contexts and spheres.

The Diffuse Final Conference, which follows the highly successful previous annual conferences on respectively Web Services and Information Markets, is intended as a platform to facilitate such a debate within its chosen themes.

The conference will review, explore and discuss the strategic issues concerning and surrounding the three interrelated technologies of Web Services, Grid Services and the Semantic Web from a broad perspective, with the following specific aims:

• Provide a strategic overview of the current status of the three technologies
• Explore the relationships between these technologies regarding the innovation aspects, knowledge aspects, enterprise aspects, and economic aspects
• Examine current initiatives in harmonisation and spotlight the issues surrounding interoperability in the widest context, including the role of open source software, harmonisation work needed, value propositions of interoperability, convergence in practice, and control and management issues
• Identify and discuss the critical points to facilitate further development especially in Europe, realistic targets and milestones, and what strategic measures and actions are needed from the stakeholders

The conference programme includes Keynotes from Carl Kesselman, a Founder of the Grid; Bruce Perens, Primary Author of the Open Source Definition; Guus Schreiber, Co-Chair, W3C Web Ontology WG; and the European Commission.

The programme also includes senior speakers from ABN AMRO Trust, BEA, Berkom, IBM, Sun, TIEKE and Universities of Heidelberg and Toronto. There will be opportunity of interactive discussions and statements from the participants.

The conference results will be widely disseminated and specifically made available to the relevant organisations. Participation in the conference, which includes entrance and documentation, is free of charge. Further information, including on-line registration, is available at http://www.diffuse.org/event3.html.