GOVERNMENT

SAS announced today that one of its grid computing experts, Cheryl Doninger, has been invited to join the Global Grid Forum's Advisory Council (GFAC). The Global Grid Forum (GGF) promotes the adoption of grid computing by defining grid specifications that lead to broadly adopted standards and interoperable software and by building an international community for the exchange of ideas and best practices. Doninger, who has spoken, presented and written extensively on grid computing, is a widely recognized industry leader and advocate for this technology. With more than 20 years experience at SAS, she helps set the company's technical direction for increasing SAS software's performance and scalability, including SAS' new grid computing functionality. Insight Research Corporation, a market research firm, estimates worldwide grid spending will grow from $714.9 million in 2005 to approximately $19.2 billion in 2010. "Cheryl was a natural choice for GFAC," says GGF chairman Mark Linesch. "Cheryl is a key leader within this community and offers a keen perspective regarding enterprise applications and grid technologies." GFAC's next meeting will be in mid-February at the 16th Global Grid Forum (GGF16) in Athens, Greece. As invited experts from the international grid community, Doninger and other council members will advise the GGF chair and steering committee on technical, business and policy issues associated with grid computing worldwide. An innovative leader in grid computing technology, SAS was the first enterprise business intelligence vendor to join GGF. SAS is also a pioneer vendor delivering grid automation capabilities across multiple solutions, integrating the benefits of grid computing with the enormous power of SAS analytics. With SAS, customers obtain critical information more quickly and leverage knowledge to gain competitive advantage.