The West Virginia High Technology Consortium (WVHTC) Foundation and Verizon West Virginia (Verizon) today announce a strategic partnership in which Verizon will provide the communications infrastructure for the Global Grid Exchange, the nation's first state-sponsored open public Internet computing grid. An initiative of the WVHTC Foundation, the Global Grid Exchange harnesses the power of the Internet to aggregate the idle or unused computer processing resources throughout the State of West Virginia. With access to such state resources, from PCs to mainframes, the Global Grid Exchange will soon be the largest open public computing grid in the world. Partnering with the WVHTC Foundation, Verizon will supply the networking equipment and communications bandwidth necessary to support the user demand anticipated from this innovative venture. The Global Grid Exchange will deliver unprecedented computing power - on- demand - to any desktop computer over the Internet, creating a cost-effective computation infrastructure that will drive innovation in the commercial, government and academic sectors around the world. Utilizing Frontier, the grid computing solution from strategic partner Parabon Computation, the Global Grid Exchange empowers users with an incomparable platform-independent grid computing environment for the easy development and deployment of distributed computing applications. "The chance to partner with the WVHTC Foundation to bring this unique Internet computing grid resource to market is an exciting opportunity for Verizon," said H. Stan Cavendish, president of West Virginia Verizon. "This high-technology project, which touches all sectors of our customer base, represents the type of innovative, leading-edge effort that Verizon wants to be associated with and supports." "As a world leader in communication services, Verizon is an ideal partner to support our networking equipment and communications infrastructure requirements for the Global Grid Exchange," said James L. Estep, president and CEO of the WVHTC Foundation. "Verizon is well suited in helping us meet the network demands we expect once the Global Grid Exchange is fully operational." Implementation of the Global Grid Exchange has already begun. It is anticipated that users will be able to access the power of this Internet computing solution in Fall 2004.