INDUSTRY

The Globus Consortium, a non-profit organization backed by global grid computing leaders HP, IBM, Intel, Sun Microsystems, Nortel and Univa -- today announced three new enterprise-level development projects for the Globus Toolkit, the de facto standard for open source grid computing infrastructure. In addition, the Consortium is launching a new monthly newsletter on the latest advances in open Grid technologies that is available free to online subscribers at its Website. "The improved robustness and web services foundation of GT4 will be a springboard for wide scale enterprise adoption of the Toolkit," said Greg Nawrocki, President of the Globus Consortium. "The Globus Consortium is moving very quickly to bolster enterprise support for the Globus Toolkit development community, which has already made great strides in providing an open platform that we believe will help facilitate Grid implementation in corporate data centers." The three new initiatives, launched less than three months after the formation of the Globus Consortium, are the latest demonstration of the momentum driving enterprise adoption of open source Globus Toolkit software. PROJECT #1: PRIORITY BUG FIXING To further stabilize Globus Toolkit 4.0 for enterprise environments, the Globus Consortium is funding efforts for bug fixing and enhancements to the Globus Toolkit. This is being done in conjunction with a system that gives Consortium members a priority response for bugs they submit. All fixes go back to the open source Globus Toolkit and several fixes and enhancements have already been completed that were absorbed into the final GT4 code base. In addition, this project is also being utilized to port some critical resource management test suites and code examples from GT3 to GT4. PROJECT #2: WEB SERVICES EXECUTION MANAGEMENT This Globus Consortium-funded effort benefits more than just the community of Globus Toolkit users. GT4 has been implemented with a method of execution management based on web services. The Consortium will sponsor the creation of documents that capture the GT4 WS-GRAM interfaces, semantics, and abstractions so that they can be used easily in Grid standards discussions. This will include a roadmap that describes how the functionality embodied in GT4 WS-GRAM can be standardized in stages, and how other standards efforts such as WSDM, WS-Agreement, and WS-CIM might be brought to bear on execution management standards at various stages. This further illustrates how the applied work done in the Globus Toolkit is helping to drive forward the progress and adoption of the work done in the various Grid and web services standards organizations. PROJECT #3: INCREASED DOCUMENTATION FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY To better support international Globus Toolkit developers -- which comprise a large percentage of the overall Globus Toolkit development community -- the Globus Consortium is funding globalization efforts. The Consortium is sponsoring a survey of Globus Alliance organizations, Consortium members, and industry best practices teams regarding globalization. This will help define the requirements and appropriate approaches for Globus software globalization. Based on this survey, the following documents will be produced: -- Globus Internationalization Coding Guidelines -- This document articulates globalization requirements, and recommends approaches that should be followed by contributors to the Globus Toolkit to ensure that all Globus software is correctly and consistently internationalized, based on current Globus Toolkit practices. -- Globus Localization Guidelines -- This document recommends procedures on how best to localize Globus software that has been authored using the approaches defined in the Globus Internationalization Coding Guidelines. -- Globus Globalization Scoping Document -- This document will be a complete review of the Globus Toolkit and all libraries upon which the Globus Toolkit depends. It will identify modifications required to make all Globus components conform to the Globus Internationalization Coding Guidelines and estimate the level of effort associated with making these modifications.