INDUSTRY

GlobusWORLD today announced a new Enterprise Grid Track with a diverse range of expert participants -- to take place at the February event in Boston. GlobusWORLD is an event that bridges the gap between cutting edge research and enterprise Grid applications. Early Grid adopters from the commercial sector -- including Bank of America, Bowne and Company, Burlington Coat Factory, Hewitt Associates, Nationwide Insurance and Wachovia -- will participate in the Enterprise Grid Track. They will be joined by top technologists from Cisco, Data Synapse, Egenera, Force 10, GridXpert, HP, IBM, Intel, Nortel, Oracle, SAP, and Sun. Leading analysts will moderate panels and challenge the experts. "The Enterprise Grid Track will be an excellent forum for IT professionals to get up to speed on the critical technical and business issues around commercial-level Grid implementations," said GlobusWORLD program co-chair, Ian Foster. "We've assembled the right combination of early adopters, technical leaders and industry pundits to provide the hype-free, practical advice that IT professionals need at this critical stage in the enterprise Grid adoption curve." The Enterprise Grid Track at GlobusWORLD will focus on the essential information that enterprise IT professionals need to know about Grid, including: "How Grid Will Affect the Network" -- A diverse range of networking vendors take a look at the future implications of Grid for the end-to-end network. "Grid and the Virtualized Data Center" -- A major national insurance company discusses the role of Grid computing software in the data center and how to create an environment where heterogeneous system resources are pooled, virtualized and allocated as needed to eliminate IT constraints and support changing business requirements. "Why Grid Should Be In Your Organization's SOA Strategy" -- A major financial institution will examine how Grid software and the use of industry standards such as OGSA, enables organizations to quickly and efficiently realize the benefits of a service-oriented architecture without having to undergo exhaustive and costly integration transformation and re-architecting measures. "Grid and the New Resource Management Paradigm" -- What will management look like in the face of new commodity computing and SOA trends? SOAs will break dozens of applications down to thousands of services. Enterprise is also moving away from large, dedicated SMP servers, towards greater numbers of commodity boxes. How will IT manage the sheer number of resources, and where does Grid fit into the picture? "Early Enterprise Grid Adopters, Lessons Learned" -- CIO panelists from different industries (manufacturing/publishing/financial/insurance) share their organizations' early experiences with Grid. "Early Transactional Grid Implementations" -- A vision for the future of Grid in transactional enterprise settings, highlighting existing capabilities versus areas that are still evolving. "Grid and the 21st Century Data Center" -- The 451 Group moderates a discussion on the role of Grid computing software in the data center. "Web services and Grid converge" -- How important is the maturation of Web Services standards to Grid's adoption in the enterprise? Where are we now with these standards, and what needs to happen to move forward? Obstacles/challenges? Ultimate rewards? "Hardware Choices for A Grid World" -- As the network moves towards Grid, how should enterprise IT be altering its hardware purchasing decisions? This panel will give a primer on how to Grid-ready your enterprise, from a hardware perspective. "Building the Business Case for Grid Computing" -- From better utilization to improved adaptability and adherence to SLAs -- this session will highlight the benefits that you should highlight when making the case for Grid in your organization's budgetary discussions. "Grid as the Foundation for Utility Computing" -- A major financial institution discusses the inherent advantages of Grid infrastructure and its synergistic relationship to utility computing. "SLAs in the Grid Era" -- Critical insights on issues related to the measurement, monitoring and execution of SLAs in a virtualized infrastructures. If you would like to register to attend GlobusWORLD 2005, please visit: http://www.globusworld.org .