INDUSTRY

The Global Grid Forum announced the selection of Mark Linesch of HP as the next GGF chair. As vice president for HP's Adaptive Enterprise Program, Linesch has worked extensively on Grid and next-generation distributed computing architectures and solutions. The search process for the next GGF chair was initiated in March of this year after Charlie Catlett announced he would be stepping down at the end of five years as chair of the GGF. Numerous candidates from industry, academia and the research communities were nominated from which the search committee underwent an extensive review process and narrowed the group to a shortlist of finalists. The list and the candidates were presented to the GGF governing bodies who, after further interviews and review, selected Linesch by an overwhelming consensus as the next chair of the GGF. During Catlett's five years, the GGF has grown from a small group of primarily academic researchers to become the preeminent Grid standards body today, with over 50 technical groups and participation from over 30 countries and 500 organizations worldwide. GGF's flagship architecture, the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA), was developed through the efforts of individuals from 60 companies and 40 research institutions and leverages the work of the Web services community in partnering organizations including DMTF, IETF, OASIS and W3C. GGF will be gathering for its next meeting Sept. 20-23 in Brussels, Belgium, to hear experiences from numerous Grid veterans who have deployed Grids within their commercial enterprises. As GGF chair, Linesch will be dedicated full time to GGF activities -- funded by HP but working independently on behalf of the entire community to continue the critical architecture and standards work needed for pervasive Grid computing. "I am honored to be selected to lead this next critical phase of GGF and Grid standards development and want to thank Charlie Catlett for his outstanding leadership over the last five years," said Linesch. "Grid computing, based on open, industry standards is providing the distributed computing platform for research collaboration, and new scientific discovery throughout the world today. The work of the Grid community is also enabling exciting new business opportunities for Grid related products and services. This is a great opportunity for research and industry and I am excited to be able to contribute." "Today, GGF is comprised of several vital, collaborating communities," said Catlett. "Over the past several years the science and research community that initially created GGF has been working shoulder to shoulder with not only end-users but also with product developers from industry. This collaboration has been a key to our success, and today products are emerging based on GGF standards and our flagship Open Grid Services Architecture, OGSA. Mark's experience in the marketplace and as a technical leader will be vital to strengthening these important collaborations to create solid standards and frameworks." "The number and quality of candidates we considered spoke volumes about the strength of the GGF Organization and it's leadership as the key driver of Grid standards over the past five years. Mark's selection comes at a pivotal point for the GGF as it works closer with industry to ensure the standards created are relevant to both the academic & industrial communities" said Ian Baird, chief business architect & vice president of marketing of Platform Computing, and a member of GGF's Advisory Committee and chair search committee. "Mark's business acumen will be instrumental in further engaging the business community while maintaining the critical support and involvement of the research and academic communities who form the very foundation of the organization." Global Grid Forum (GGF; http://www.ggf.org) is a globally distributed community of product developers, researchers, technologists and end-users of Grid technologies working together to develop best practices and technical standards to create a foundation for Grid computing applications, products and services. Established in 1999, the GGF community is comprised of thousands of participants from 50 countries and over 500 organizations. GGF is supported by over 50 sponsor member companies and over 25 sponsoring research laboratories, programs and universities.