Milestones in Grid and Utility Computing

GridGain Systems Releases Open Source Grid Platform for Java
GridGain Systems announced the first release of its GridGain project, an open source grid computing platform for Java. GridGain 1.0 is a computational grid framework, available with LGPL licensing, that provides AOP-based grid enabling. It operates with Java 5 or higher and Linux, Mac OS X, major Unix brands and Windows NT/2000/2003/XP/Vista. GridGain provides integration with JBoss, Spring, Spring AOP, JBoss AOP, AspectJ, and JGroups. A free download is available the GridGain web site.

Oracle 11g Focuses on BI, VLDB, Unstructured Data
Oracle announced a new release of its flagship database product. Oracle 11g includes added features such as business intelligence (BI), very large databases (VLDB), high availability applications and easy problem diagnosis. It also adds news compression technologies and capabilities for rapid access to unstructured data.

Gridbus Broker 3.1 Adds Support for Plug-ins
The Gridbus Project has release Gridbus Broker 3.1 with new plug-in capabilities. Release 3.1 provides a plug-in structure for middleware and programming models. It provides a workflow engine plug-in and a thread programming model plug-in. Gridbus Broker is available with an LGPL license. Download

Sun Grid Gateway and Collaboration to Boost Media Grid
Sun Microsystems has joined the a digital media grid standards group to develop international standards for media processing in grid computing environments. Ken North takes a look at the Media Grid effort and the Sun collaboration.

Gridscape II Updates Grid Monitoring Portal with Google Maps
The Gridbus Project of the University of Melbourne has released freely-downloadable Gridscape II. This grid monitoring portal software now provides integration with Google Maps.

GigaSpaces Handles Transactional Computing for Virgin Mobile
Following deployment of a new Order Management System, Virgin Mobile has signed an enterprise license agreement for GigaSpaces Space-Based Architecture solution. Virgin Mobile is the UK's largest mobile network operator and it has experienced rapid growth. In the holiday sales season of 2005, its application server-based order processing system and web site failed. It moved to the GigaSpaces engine, which provided scalability and a capacity for handling a tripling in the number of orders per day in August, 2006. GigaSpaces released version 5.2 in December, which provides stateful services for .NET and Java developers.

TII Computer Deals at Dell Home Systems 728x90

NASA and M2Mi Announce Partnership to Automate Machine-to-Machine Intelligence
NASA Ames Research Center announced an agreement with M2Mi Corporation to evolve automated machine-to-machine (M2M) intelligence for space missions. M2Mi Corporation, located at NASA Research Park, will transfer technology used to automate intelligence for computers, spacecraft and robots to other applications that use connected machines. It will adapt automated M2M intelligence to mechanisms and devices such as wired or wireless tools, sensors, server computers, robots and grid systems. Automated M2M intelligence uses a Semantic Web communication format to support conversations between interconnected machines. M2Mi founder and CEO Geoff Brown said "The prime market [for intelligent automation] is commercial enterprise software that will optimize how machines work. For example, this automated M2M intelligence would permit an automated factory to adjust its system to be more efficient."

Grid-Ready Oracle Application Server 10g Sets Record for Java Application Server Performance
Oracle Corporation announced the combination of Oracle® Application Server 10g Release 3 and Oracle 10g Database set a new record for performance on the SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark. Oracle Application Server, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, achieved a world record performance of 6812.79 JOPS@Standard (jAppServer Operations Per Second). For the benchmark, the database server ran on an HP Integrity server with 32 dual-core Intel Itanium processors. Oracle Application Server, a grid-ready application server, ran on 11 HP Integrity rx3600 servers with 2 dual-core Itanium processors. The operating system for all servers was HP-UX 11i v2.

SDSC Announces Gemstone 1.0
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) announced the release of Gemstone 1.0 (Grid Enabled Molecular Science Through Online Networked Environments). Gemstone, a framework for accessing grid resources, supports scientific exploration, workflow capture and replay, and a dynamic services oriented architecture. It is being developed by SDSC, National Biomedical Computation Resource, and the Baldridge Research Group at University of Zurich. Gemstone enables molecular sciences researchers to discover remote grid application services and compose them to the chemical and physical nature of the problem at hand. Security for Gemstone is provided through GAMA, a grid-based credential repository, and requires registration through the NBCR portal. Gemstone includes applications and utilities provided as web services that can be integrated into any client application.

Pillar Data Systems and Oracle Announce Storage Grid
Pillar Data Systems, an enterprise network storage vendor, and Oracle announced the availability of the Pillar Axiom™ storage system with the Oracle® Database 10g Accelerator. The combination provides a storage grid with simplified administration for Oracle DBAs. The accelerator program guides users through a process of defining business and IT requirements in order to partition databases, separating objects into separate tiers of storage to optimize performance. The Pillar Axiom system blends storage area network (SAN) and network addressable storage (NAS) technology.

GigaSpaces Positioned in Visionaries Quadrant by Gartner Research
Gartner Research recently placed GigaSpaces in the visionaries quadrant in a recent Magic Quadrant report about Enterprise Application Services. GigaSpaces has developed a model for a space-based architecture that combines distributed caching (Data Grid), content-based messaging (Messaging Grid) and parallel processing (Processing Grid). The objective is to use linear, dynamically scalable services as a successor to tier-based application architectures. GigaSpaces implement the new middleware on top of a distributed shared memory space that enables clustering, high availability and location transparency. Gartner used nine criteria for evaluating enterprise application servers. The criteria included advanced web services support, web innovation, business process composition, high-end extreme transaction processing, developer productivity, internal microkernel-style (pluggable) architecture, and support of deployment on hardware grids.

QLogic Expands InfiniBand Products with SilverStorm Technologies Acquisition
QLogic Corporation announced an agreement to acquire SilverStorm Technologies for $60 million in cash. QLogic offers storage networking solutions, including blade server switches, fiber channel host bus adapters and stackable switches. SilverStorm Technologies provides high performance interconnect solutions for cluster and grid computing networks. The acquisition will broaden the QLogic InfiniBand product line. QLogic offers SAN Pro for large businesses and SAN Express storage solutions for small and medium businesses.

New Data Access and Integration Services (DAIS) Specifications Published
The DAIS Working Group of the Open Grid Forum announced three new data access specifications have been published as Provisional Recommendations. The specifications represent four years of effort to define standardized interfaces for service-based access to databases. The new specifications are GFD.74: The Core (WS-DAI) Specification, Version 1.0, GFD.75: The XML Realization (WS-DAIX) Specification, Version 1.0 and GFD.76: The Relational Realisation (WS-DAIR) Specification, Version 1.0.

Electric Cloud and Platform Computing Announce Partnership for Product Integration Partnership
Electric Cloud and Platform Computing announced an agreement to integrate Electric Cloud's ElectricAccelerator™ with Platform Computing's LSF products. ElectricAccelerator is a software build product that provides building, packaging, testing and deploying software. The partnership expects that moving it to a grid environment will enable users to create ElectricAccelerator clusters and speed up build
tasks by a factor of 10.

Open Grid Forum DAIS-WG Closes Public Comment Period on Two Documents
The Open Grid Forum announced two documents closed their public comment period. The documents are "Firewall Issues overview" (Biederberger et al) and "Standardised Namespaces for XML infosets in OGF" (M. Drescher). Two other documents also closed their public comment period. These are "HPC Job Scheduling: Base Case and Common Cases" (Marvin Theimer et al) and "Information Dissemination in the Grid Environment, via the INFOD-WG" (Authors S. Davey et al).

Mandriva Releases First Beta Version of Mandriva Linux 2007
The first beta version ("Thor") of Mandriva Linux 2007 is now available. The available versions include KDE (3.5.3) or Gnome (2.16), i586 or x86_64. It includes a new mirror structure, new standard menus, an an updated wireless application. Thor (Gnome) supports 44 languages, whereas Thor (KDE) is availlable for 12 languages.

World Community Grid Unveils Help Defeat Cancer Project
The World Community Grid is undertaking a new project for analysis of tissue microarrays (TMA), which help doctors select treatment strategies for cancer patients. A group of investigators at Rutgers University, the University of Pennsylvania School, and the Cancer Institute of New Jersey, UMDNJ – Robert Wood Johnson Medical School have developed web-based prototype for automatically imaging, analyzing, archiving and sharing digitized tissue microarrays. The aggregate computational power of the World Community Grid will increase the capability of researchers to conduct more experiments and analyze more tissue samples.

Grid will Boost NetAlter Search
NetAlter Software announced a new search engine that relies on innovative search algorithms and grid computing to provide search results that are more semantically relevant. The search engine uses semantic agents and a relational model for linking sets of data. It supports distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) processing and and searching of web databases, enterprise databases and multimedia files. NetAlter Search will be available for Windows, Unix, Linux and mobile devices.

LayeredX Gaming Server Network Launches
Layered Technologies announced the launch of LayeredX to provide on-demand managed servers to the gaming community. LayeredX combines Tier 1 backbones to create a special gaming-only network with low latency. LayeredX runs on HP servers and it provides a web-based control panel. It uses a blended network that includes 2Gbps fiber connections with several network providers.

Open Grid Forum Formed from Merger of Enterprise Grid Alliance and Global Grid Forum
The Enterprise Grid Alliance and Global Grid Forum have signed an agreement to merge to form the Open Grid Forum (OGF)

. The President and CEO is Mark Linesch. Existing working groups and leadership will remain in place. OGF will soon establish a Board of Directors.

Research Study Finds Grid Adoption Increase and SOA Awareness Problem
The Fourth Oracle Grid Index report by Quocirca found a global increase in grid adoption, with the Asia Pacific region making the greatest gains (from 4.9 to 5.3). The index for the United States was the highest among the regions, but it was unchanged (6.1) from the previous survey in November 2005. The global grid index increased from 5.2 to 5.4. 70% of the organizations surveyed indicate they are using grid computing in some capacity. The survey also found 76% of IT respondents were familiar with service-oriented architecture (SOA), but 55% of business respondents were not. 52% of respondents are in the process of moving to SOA.

Singapore National Library Board Testing Grid for RFID and Image Processing
Using a 62-server grid, the Singapore National Library Board (NLB) has created a digital archive of its patrons. The NLB uses cameras at its 40 branches to capture the faces of patrons as they check out library materials. This produces a collection of 30 million photos per year, which are stored on Linux servers that support the Singapore library system's RFID infrastructure. Singapore pioneered the use of RFID tags in libraries

and has been tagging books with 13.56 MHz labels since 1998. To support grid applications, the Globus Toolkit is in use on the Linux servers.

CERN Announces Partnership with HP, Intel and Oracle
The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced CERN openlab phase 2, a partnership between CERN and Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Oracle. The focus of the second phase includes a security initiative, a Grid Interoperability Centre and a Platform Competence Centre. The security initiative will pursue solutions for providing client and mail server security. F-Secure and Stonesoft will contribute in this area to CERN openlab. Initial efforts will focus on malware and intrusion detection and prevention systems.

The objective of the Grid Interoperability Centre is to enable CERN openlab to promote grid middleware interoperability by integrating and certifying middleware. The goal of the Platform Competence Centre is to promote hardware and software optimization and virtual platforms for grid applications.

GGF DAIS Working Group Charters Activity for RDF/Ontology Realization
The Global Grid Forum DAIS Working Group has chartered a new activity to develop RDF/Ontology data service specifications

. The scope of the specification includes developing an ontology interface based on the W3C Resource Description Format (RDF) language. It also includes developing an interface for the W3C SPARQL query language for RDF. The plan is to publish the initial draft of the WS-DAI-RDF/Ontology Specifications in March 2007.

SilverStorm Announces RDS over InfiniBand Solution for Oracle Real Application Clusters
High-performance interconnect solutions from SilverStorm Technologies are in use by customers listed among the top 500 supercomputer sites. It's no surprise Oracle has teamed with SilverStorm to develop a Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) InfiniBand interconnect solution for Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). RDS over InfiniBand is a high-bandwidth, low-latency transport system that provides IPC communication between RAC nodes. InfiniBand technology enables organizations to create high performance clusters using commodity servers and storage. The new RDS over InfiniBand solution includes Oracle 10g release 2, Oracle Real Application Clusters with RDS and SilverStorm QuickSilver 3.2 for Linux.

Heterogeneous Computing Workshop Presentation
Geoff Brown, Director of Grid Computing, delivered this keynote presentation to the Heterogeneous Computing Workshop at the International Parallel and Distributed Symposium.

NCSA MyProxy Project Releases MyProxy 3.5
MyProxy is an open source project at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. It manages X.509 Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificates and private keys. MyProxy provides a credential repository and online certificate authority for grid portals and Globus Toolkit users. It is compatible with Globus Toolkit 2.4, 3.0, 3.2, and 4.0. Version 3.5 is now available from http://myproxy.ncsa.uiuc.edu/.

DAIS Working Group Releases Specifications Overview
The Global Grid Forum Data Access and Integration Services Working Group has produced the Web Service Data Access and Integration (WS-DAI) family of specifications. The focus of the WS-DAIR and WS-DAIX specifications is accessing relational and XML data sources, respectively, from a grid environment. The DAIS Working Group has produced a document that provides an overview of the specifications.

Cluster Resources Announces Moab Utility/Hosting Suite 4.5.0
Cluster Resources released Moab Utility/Hosting Suite 4.5.0, which automates many cluster management functions. It orchestrates allocation and provisioning of unique environments, optimizes and secures resources and supports real-time billing. The Moab suite guarantees service levels through real-time monitoring of customer usage of resources and services. It provides regular updates of that information to scheduling software. Because the suite provides automated set up of unique environments, it enables organizations to provide utility computing that requires little maintenance. Moab Utility/Hosting Suite 4.5.0 integrates with resource management software such as Platform LSF, Altair PBS Pro, IBM LoadLeveler, Torque and OpenPBS. It runs on computers using Linux, Mac OS X and Windows operating systems.

Sun Grid Utility Delayed by U.S. Government Security Restrictions
U.S. State Department concerns about security have delayed the launch of Sun Grid, according to Sun president Jonathan Schwartz. Sun's original plan for its grid utility was to launch in 2005, with Sun Grid being accessible through a web browser. The federal government has invoked export regulations that bar users from certain countries and the government reportedly wants Sun Grid users to provide notarized proof of identity. Sun will roll out Sun Grid for US-based customers and offer other grid computing services in other countries. Sun will provide grid computing and storage capabilities for $1 per hour and accept credit card payments for using Sun Grid.

Global Grid Exceeds 1 GB Per Second Data Transfer Rate
The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid collaboration (WLCG) announced a global grid had sustained a transfer rate of 1 gigabyte per second during a service test of physics data transfers. The data was transferred from CERN to 12 computer centers across the globe. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is located in Geneva Switzerland. The 1 GB transfer rate is the equivalent of transferring a DVD every five seconds.

The service test was to determine whether grid transfers were fast enough for Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments. The experiments will investigate properties of subatomic particles and forces and provide more information about the origins of the Universe.

Digipede Unveils .NET Grid for Financial Services
At the June 20-22 Securities Industry Association Technology Management Conference in New York, Digipede Technologies demonstrated a .NET grid for financial services applications. The grid-enabled applications showcased the Digipede Network, HP ProLiant Servers and the Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server. Digipede Network Professional Edition supports .NET 2.0 and the Digipede Framework SDK integrates with Microsoft Visual Studio and the SQL Server 2005 database.

HPDC Workshop on Next-Generation Distributed Data Management
On 20 June 2006 at the IEEE High Performance Distributed Computing (HDPC) Conference in Paris, France, there was a distributed data management workshop. Topics included gLite file transfer, AMGA Metadata Catalogue, extending NSFv4 and a rule-based distributed data management system.

GGF Public Comment Period for OGSA 1.5 Closes
The Global Grid Forum (GGF) announced the public comment period for two important documents. The documents are Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) Version 1.5 and OGSA Glossary of Terms 1.5. Other documents completed the 60-day public comment period, including "Interoperability Testing for DAIS Working Group Specifications". The public comment period recently closed for three specifications related to Web Services Data Access: Web Services Data Access and Integration: The XML Realization, Web Services Data Access and Integration: The Relational Realisation (WS-DAIR) Specification and Web Services Data Access and Integration: The Core (WS-DAI) Specification, Version 1.0.

Grid Cracks 63-Year Old Cryptography Problem
Stefan Krah, a German-born violinist with an interest in cryptography, used a grid of 2500 home computers to crack messages encoded by the German Navy in World War II. A team of British scientists at Bletchley Park had been unable to decipher some messages encoded in 1942 using the famous Enigma machines. Three unsolved Enigma intercepts were published in the journal Cryptologia and cryptology enthusiasts have been trying to decode them since their publication in 1995.

Mosso Offers Utility Computing for $100 per Month
Mosso, Inc. a startup backed by Rackspace Managed Hosting, has announced a utility computing package for resellers for $100 per month. The service will offer unlimited websites, databases and e-mail accounts using a cluster of specialized servers. The $100 a month account will include 80 gigabytes of storage and 2000 gigabytes of monthly data transfer. Customer billing is an add-on for $5 per domain per month. Each account will include traffic load balancing and denial-of-service (DoS) mitigation.

EMC Acquires Information Grid Software from Axciom
EMC announced a software acquisition and a partnership with Acxiom Corporation. EMC paid $30 million for Acxiom's information grid software. It also entered into a joint development agreement and distribution partnership with Acxiom. For the third quarter of 2005, Axciom's revenue was $330.5 million. EMC's revenue for the third quarter of 2005 was $2.37 billion. It started 2006 with the acquisition of Internosis, an IT services company that focuses on Microsoft-based environments.

DataSynapse and Informatica Announce Partnership
DataSynapse and Informatica signed a partnership agreement to integrate software from the two companies to form a utility computing infrastructure. The partners will interface the Informatica PowerCenter dat integration platform with DataSynapse GridServer. PowerCenter enables Informatica customers to pool resources for data integration tasks and adding GridServer to the mix will provide a grid capability for service-oriented IT environments. Informatica reported $65 million revenues for the third quarter, a 24% increase over 2004. DataSynapse is a venture-capital funded company founded in 2000.

Quocirca Releases Third Grid Index
The third Quocirca Grid Index report shows an increase in grid adoption in the USA. Index numbers for the USA have risen to equal Nordic countries (6.1). The Adoption Lifecycle Index in North America rose from 2.7 to 3.9. The Adoption Lifecycle Index for Southeast Asia increased to 6.9, Europe increased to 3.2 and Asia Pacific rose from 1.5 to 2.0.

The smallest increases were in Asia and southern Europe. In Asia, India increased from 2.9 to 4.4, Korea from 4.4 to 4.7, China from 4.7 to 4.9. Japan's grid index value was 4.4.

Informatica Releases Grid-Enabled Data Integration System
Informatica Corporation released PowerCenter 8, a data integration solution that's provide ubiquitous connectivity to enterprise data sources. PowerCenter 8 provides access to heterogeneous data sources, including structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. Informatica intends for PowerCenter 8 to be a single data integration platform that addresses complex integration challenges, including multi-terabyte data warehouses, legacy system migration and synchronization with operational data stores. In response to a survey of its customers, Informatica included grid-computing capabilities and support for federated data in PowerCenter 8.

US DoD Acquires Voltaire Grid Backbone for 1024-Node Cluster
Voltaire, a leading provider of grid backbone solutions, announced the U.S. Air Force has chosen its InfiniBand-based grid backbone switching for a grid at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. It will be installed to support a cluster at the Aeronautical Systems Center (ASC) Major Shared Resource Center (MSRC). The backbone will support Hewlett Packard's Unified Cluster Portfolio and an HP clustered supercomputer used for advanced weapons system design research. The supercomputer is a 1024-node Cluster Platform 4000 with HP ProLiant DL145 servers running Linux. Voltaire will supply Grid Director ISR 9288 switches to provide the interconnect and HP will provide XC System Software to provide cluster management.

3PAR Unveils Utility Storage for VMWare ESX Server and VMotion
3PAR has developed a utility computing storage solution that simplifies provisioning and optimization of data service levels for data centers using VMWare ESX Server. 3PAR Dynamic Optimization is a tool for optimizing data service levels and VMWare VMotion optimizes processing service levels. Integrating 3PAR InServ Storage Server with VMWare ESX Server provides granular provisioning of server resources and rapid optimization of data and processing server levels. 3PAR Virtual Copy enables data centers to rapidly provision servers from an image on 3PAR InServ. 3PAR storage products use Fiber Channel ATA (FATA) technology.

iReach Report Forecasts Utility Computing Growth
A report from Irish IT research company iReach predicts the global market for utility computing will grow to €20 billion by 2008. The report indicated that approximately 65% of Irish companies are interested in adopting some form of utility computing. A survey of 100 IT executives found the foremost concern for the next two years is reducing operational costs. Because Irish organizations are using only 25% of their server and storage capacity, resource sharing can reduce total cost of ownership.

Dramatic Performance Gains Seen with Bank of America Grid
At the GridWorld conference, Micheal Oltman of Bank of America reported major performance improvements from applying grid technology. The bank installed DataSynapse Grid Server software for a grid of 80 computers. Execution time for one application dropped from 90 minutes to 20. For another, the reduction was from four hours to 40 minutes. After the bank scaled up to 600 servers, the 90-minute job ran in four minutes and the 4-hour job ran in 20 minutes.

Oracle, NEC Form Grid Computing Alliance
NEC has entered into an alliance with Oracle Corporation to develop software for grid computing. The partnership with Oracle will enable NEC to offer grid software for building mission-critical, high-availability systems using NEC blade servers.

Manufacturers such as NEC are experiencing a shift away from mainframe computing as technologies such as grid computing gain traction. NEC's semiconductor business and computer platform sales have been declining. Sales for the quarter ending June 30, 2005 were down 5.2% from the same period the previous year. Establishing a solid position in the emerging grid market is an important strategic move for NEC, which hopes to grow it software and services businesses.

NEC and Oracle previously created a partnership to capture a larger share of the database server market in Asia. NEC was also a partner of Oracle Japan for the purpose of promoting Oracle Network Computer adoption in Japan.

European Bank BNP Paribas Deploys DataSynapse GridServer
BNP Paribas, a leading European bank with 100,000 employees in 85 countries, has adopted DataDynapse GridServer technology. The bank has deployed GridServer across HP blades in its structured credit group. It plans to expand its derivatives and trading business by deploying GridServer across several business lines, including credit and interest rate derivatives.

The current grid is running in the BNP Paribas London office, but there are plans to include sites in Tokyo and New York. The bank has adopted grid computing to support complex financial analysis, larger trading volumes and pooling of computing resources.

Griffith University Selects Sun for 128-CPU Grid
Sun Microsystems emerged the winner in a competition to supply grid computing hardware to Griffith University of Australia. The competition included Dell, HP and IBM. Griffith University is one of six Australian universities to participate in the Queensland Parallel Supercomputing Foundation. Griffith will use the Fedora Core 3 operating system and Clustermatic 5 from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US.

Digipede Network 1.0 Released
Digipede Technologies completed beta testing and released Digipede Network 1.0 for the Windows platform. it is the first commercial distributed computing solution based entirely on Microsoft .NET. The network includes the Digipede Server, Digipede Agents and Digipede Workbench. The company will also offer an SDK later this year.

World's Longest Grid Links 3 Continents
A SPARC-based grid that includes computers on three continents is now the longest grid in the world. The Innovation Node: Western Australia grid links Sun Microsystems' SPARC computers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia, and the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Center in the UK. The Curtin Business School is working with members of the Chinese financial services community and researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences to develop models and data mining technologies. Professor A.D. Lloyd has used virtual clusters and grid technology for research on modeling consumer behavior and customer relationship management (CRM).

UK Government Funds Grid Knowledge Transfer
The UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has made a £1m investment ($1.79 million) to spur adoption of grid computing. DTI funded the Inter-Enterprise Computing Knowledge Transfer Network (IECNet), a collaboration between Intellect and the National e-Science Centre. The funding will strengthen efforts to encourage grid adoption, such as the launch of a grid computing portal and a Knowledge Transfer Network.

Public Comment Period for Several Global Grid Forum Documents
During a 60-day public comment period, the Global Grid Forum is soliciting comments about eight documents. The close of the period for public comments varies by document, with the earliest being 5 November 2005 and the latest being 22 December. The documents include "Defining the Grid: A Roadmap for OGSA™ Standards" (GFD.53), "Configuration Description, Deployment, and Lifecycle Management (CDDLM) Deployment API", "OGSA™ WSRF Basic Profile 1.0", "Use of SAML for OGSI Authorization" and the "Web Services Agreement Specification (WS-Agreement)".

Gigaspaces Wins Duke's Choice Award
At the JavaOne 2005 conference, Sun presented a Duke's Choice Award to GigaSpaces for its innovative Enterprise Application Grid (EAG) software. The EAG software had been named the Featured Software for January 2005 by GridSummit.com.

Global Grid Forum to Collaborate with Standards Organizations
GGF will coordinate with the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), and the Tele Management Forum (TMF) to develop standards for managing networked resources. To support the collaboration, the Global Grid Forum is establishing a public working group known as the Standards Development Organization Collaboration on Network Resources Management. The SCRM Working Group will review standards for discovery, deployment, event handling, lifecycle tracking, notification, resource availability and state management of resources such as data objects and physical devices.

BNP Paribas Expands Grid with 150 Servers
BNP Paribas, a French banking group, has expanded its grid computing project by adding another 150 servers. The grid uses DataSynapse GridServer technology to distribute processing across 300 dedicated processors. BNP Paribas had been planning grids for the interest rate derivatives group and structured credit group, but the organization is now considering a global grid to include data centers in London, New York and Tokyo.

Platform Computing and Macrovision Collaborate on Grid Software License Management Solution
Software licensing issues have slowed grid adoption in enterprise computing environments with an infrastructure of commercial software, but Platform Computing and Macrovision Corporation promise a solution. Platform and Macrovision have entered into an agreement to deliver a comprehensive license management system for enterprise grids. The new system will bundle Platform LSF License Scheduler and Platform LSF Analytics products with Macrovision’s FLEXnet Manager and FLEXnet Connector.

DataSynapse and Milliman Announce Partnership for Insurance Pricing and Projection System
DataSynapse, a provider of virtual enterprise grids, and Milliman, Inc., an actuarial and management consulting firm, entered into an agreement to produce software for the insurance industry.
The collaboration will produce a grid-enabled version of MG-ALFA, Milliman’s pricing and projection software. MG-ALFA is used for product development, decision support and financial management. A grid using the DataSynapse GridServer will distribute the processing to evaluate insurance products and
entities.

Nimrod Project Releases Nimrod/G 3.0
The Nimrod Project released version 3.0 of Nimrod/G, a research prototype of a parametric modeling system. Nimrod/G is a grid-aware version of Nimrod. Release 3.0 uses Globus Toolkit 4 for discovery of grid resources. Sponsors of the Nimrod Project include Monash University, University of Queensland,
Distributed Systems Technology Centre, and the Australian Research Council.

ASPEED Software Ships ACCELLERANT 3.1
ASPEED released the ACCELLERANT SDK that enables developers to exploit grid technology. Developers can use the SDK to enhance their applications by adding parallel execution across multiple processors. It supports execution on various Linux and Windows platforms.

Web Presence Report Card for Technology, Research and Media Web Sites
Ken North Computing released a white paper with rankings for web sites belonging to computer and software companies, open source initiatives, media organizations, and companies that provide information technology (IT) research. Section 5.3.3 discusses grid computing sites.

Dell Unveils New Four-Processor Servers for Data Centers
Dell unveiled new multi-processor server lines targeted for data centers looking at server consolidation and replacing RISC systems. Dell PowerEdge 6800 and PowerEdge 6850 servers use the 64-bit Intel Xeon processor MP.

Executives Debate Grids and the Future of the Network Machine
In a March 2005 panel discussion, computing industry executives discussed grid trends. The panel participants included Robert Fogel (Intel: Director of Worldwide Grid Strategy and Business Development), Michael Feinberg (HP: Vice President and CTO of Network Storage Solutions), Alexander Gebhart (SAP: Development Manager, Netweaver Enterprise Grid Computing), David Martin (IBM: Program Director, Internet Standards and Technology), Rob Redford (Cisco: Vice President, product and technology marketing), and Franco Travostino (Nortel: Director of Advanced Technology).

GridIron Software and Microsoft Partner for Video Encoding Grid Solution
GridIron Software provides a grid computing solution that is embedded directly into software applications. It has been working with Microsoft to develop grid solutions for high-definition video encoding with Windows XP.

Vendors Launch Globus Consortium
Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Nortel, Sun and Univa announced formation of a new consortium to promote the use of the Globus Toolkit in the enterprise. One objective is to enable IT managers to view distributed computing resources as a single, unified data center.

Dell, EMC, Intel and Oracle Partner for Project MegaGrid Launch
To develop standards and best practices for enterprise grids, Dell, EMC, Intel and Oracle announced an initiative called Project MegaGrid. Other contributors include Cramer (application software) and F5 Networks (Big-IP switches).

RG4MS: Java Source for Reliable Messaging for Grid Services Released
Since 2003, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and NEC have cooperated to develop middleware for grid computing. They've released the Java source for a message delivery service named Reliable Messaging for Grid Services (RM4GS), which implements the OASIS WS-Reliability standard. RM4GS can work with Message Driven Beans and its implemented as a J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA) resource adapter.

Univa Corporation Launched to Support Enterprise Grid Computing
The creators of the Globus Toolkit (Dr. Ian Foster, Dr. Carl Kesselman, Steve Tuecke) have formed Univa Corporation to provide software and services for grids built with the Globus software.

Grids for .NET
Alchemi is a framework for grid computing in a .NET environment. The framework includes an Alchemi Manager and Alchemi Executors (agents) distributed across the grid. Alchemi is open source software from the Gridbus Project at Grid Computing and Distributed Systems (GRIDS) Laboratory at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Grids and Early Adopters
in "Panel discusses SQL, XML, Web Services, and Grid Computing", Ron Bourret writes about a panel discussion with Rick Cattell (Sun), Peter Coffee (eWEEK), Daniela Florescu (BEA), Jim Gray (Microsoft), Jim Kleewein (IBM), and Jim Melton (Oracle).
Listen to part 1 part 2.

Peter Coffee was discussing feedback from eWEEK readers, who are more likely to be in the enterprise computing crowd than the academic and scientific community.

HP, Oracle, Sun Form New Grid Consortium
Don Deutsch of Oracle is the president of the Enterprise Grid Alliance. Grid technology has enjoyed great success in scientific and academic communities. The EGA consortium will focus on increasing grid adoption in the enterprise. Sun and HP are also members of the new consortium.

IDC Forecasts Grid Computing Market to Reach $12 Billion by 2007
An IDC research report forecasts the grid computing market will $12 billion revenue by 2007. The report say the grid market will split into three segments (compute, data, and optimization). To purchase this study, call IDC Sales (508-988-7988) or email sales@idc.com.

Next big thing: grid computing
Dr. Wolfgang Gentzch, managing director of Grid Computing and Networking Services at MCNC Research and Development Institute, discusses grid computing. In this interview, he describes three waves of grid adoption.

Sun Announces Alliance with 20 New Grid Computing Partners
Sun Microsystems announced it has added 20 new High Performance and Technical Computing (HPTC) Alliance Partners. The new grid computing HPTC Alliance partners include Avaki ClearSpeed Critical Software, DataDirect Networks, DataSynapse, Dothill, Engineous, Enigmatec, Exludus, GridIron, GridXper, Level 5 Networks, Meiosys, Paremus, Pathscale, PGI, Scali, StorageTek, Streamline Computing and United Devices.

"Sun's 20 new HPTC alliance partners represent some of the hottest technologies in the industry and can contribute to building a complete Grid solution," said Shahin Khan, vice president of the HPTC Business Unit at Sun.

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Announcements

Send mail to with questions or comments about this web site. Copyright © 2005-7 GridSummit.com Last modified: 04/08/08

Send mail to with questions or comments about this web site.
Copyright © 2005-7 GridSummit.com
Last modified: 04/08/08