INDUSTRY

SAN DIEGO, Grid computing takes a major step forward today with the first implementation of emerging standards known as the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA). The Globus Project (TM) issued its alpha release of the Globus Toolkit 3.0 (GT3), a set of open-source software and services whose earlier versions have transformed the way on-line resources are shared across organizations. GT3’s release, which coincides with the first GlobusWorld conference this week in San Diego (http://www.globusworld.org), is the result of the past year’s effort toward defining specifications for Grid services that extend standard Web services. The OGSA-based alpha version builds on prior releases of the Globus Toolkit, which is central to hundreds of science and engineering projects on the Grid. The Globus Project also announced that other leading Grid participants are committing to use of GT3 and OGSA. Companies include Avaki, Cray, Entropia, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, Platform Computing, Silicon Graphics, Inc., Sun Microsystems, and Veridian. Research projects include FusionGrid, TeraGrid, the Department of Energy Science Grid, the Grid Physics Network (GriPhyN), the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, the International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory, and the National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative. A collection of quotes about GT3 by these partners is at http://www.globus.org/about/news/prGT3quotes03-02-12.html. “We’re enthused about this latest Globus Toolkit release,” said Ian Foster, associate division director for mathematics and computer science at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and professor of computer science at the University of Chicago. “The Grid’s promise of seamlessly sharing resources across distributed organizations takes another major step towards realization with GT3 and its implementation of the OGSA standards. The array of partners that we have assembled demonstrates the power of combining open source and open standards with industrial investment.” Foster is co-leader of the Globus Project with colleagues Carl Kesselman (professor of computer science at the University of Southern California and director of the USC Information Sciences Institute’s Center for Grid Technologies) and Steve Tuecke (lead architect of the ANL Distributed Systems Laboratory). GT3 will benefit from an expanding community of developers who are closely involved in helping to develop Grid standards through the Global Grid Forum (GGF), a community-based organization with public- and private-sector contributors. For example, the UK e-Science program is leading the GGF’s OGSA Database Access and Integration (DAIS) working group to build database capabilities into OGSA and GT3. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is also contributing directly to the GT3 code base. “GT3 provides a major step forward in the functionality provided by the Globus Toolkit,” said Kesselman. “However, of equal importance is that GT3 builds on OGSA, which in turn builds on Web services. By leveraging widely supported commodity technologies, we can lower the barrier of entry to the deployment of Grids and the development of Grid technologies. As a consequence, we expect to see the base of GT3 deployment to extend into new and important user communities.” The GT3 beta release will be in Spring 2003, with official release in Summer 2003, Tuecke emphasized. “The term ‘alpha’ means code that works to the best of its developers’ knowledge, but is not final or bug-free,” he said. “Support for the alpha release will be on a best-effort basis, because the Globus Project development team will be focused largely on improving the implementation for future releases.” Development of GT3 is sponsored primarily by the U.S. Department of Energy through its Office of Science’s Mathematical, Information and Computational Sciences Division, as well as by industry partners IBM and Microsoft Research. "Grid technologies are essential to the scientific mission of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)," said Ed Oliver, Associate Director for the DOE Advanced Scientific Computing Research Office (ASCR). "ASCR has long supported this type of fundamental R&D both to further the study of computer science, and to add important new capabilities to energy-related research. We are also gratified by the Grid's broad impact in commercial computing, which is a secondary but important benefit." QUOTES FROM GLOBUS PROJECT PARTNERS "The TeraGrid is an ambitious project funded by the National Science Foundation to build a distributed terascale computing and data infrastructure across four sites, connected by the world's fastest network at 40 gigabits per second. The Globus Toolkit 3.0 and new, OGSA standards-based Grid services are an essential, enabling technology for TeraGrid. We look forward to working with the Globus Project in mutually beneficial ways to help advance science and engineering research through Grid computing." Rick Stevens Project Director, TeraGrid; Mathematics and Computer Science Division Director, Argonne National Laboratory "For the Grid to realize its full potential to dramatically increase the effectiveness of computing in science and engineering, three high-level milestones must be met. First, we must provide basic infrastructure to support resource aggregation and sharing through the formation and management of large-scale virtual organizations, and good progress has been made toward this milestone. Second, the Grid must provide for using and managing these resources through value-added services that are easily integrated with the Web. Third, the Grid must provide technology for promoting Grid resources and services to semantically rich objects, enabling knowledge-based problem-solving environments. "With the Globus Toolkit 3.0 implementation of OGSA, we have an important set of basic tools to achieve the second major milestone in making Grids indispensable for increasing productivity and effectiveness of science and engineering ­- that is, a unified and standard approach to integrating Grids and Web Services." William E. Johnston Senior Scientist, DOE Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and NASA Ames Research Center "NEESgrid is a collaborative research environment designed to serve the needs of the earthquake engineering community. For NEESgrid to be a production resource and to work across platforms, across disciplines, and at sites throughout the U.S., it needs persistent standards and integrated resources that can be easily accessed and used by all. That's why the Globus Toolkit is an important component of our efforts. Using NEESgrid, earthquake engineers can focus on conducting their experiments and developing better approaches to reducing the impact of natural hazards. They benefit from the resource management, security, and software compatibility Globus provides without having to deal with these issues directly. The Globus Toolkit provides a solid foundation for innovation, and I am especially pleased to see the 3.0 release" Dan Reed Director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and Principal Investigator for NEESgrid "The Globus Toolkit 3.0 is not only an important element of IBM's Grid strategy, it represents a significant milestone for the computing industry," said Tom Hawk, IBM's general manager of Grid computing. "Over time, I believe we'll look back on 2003 as one of the key acceleration years in Grid because of the introduction of Globus Took Kit 3.0 and its implementation of the emerging Open Grid Services Architecture standard. OGSA and the Globus Toolkit are as important to the development of Grid as TCP/IP was to the development of the Internet." Tom Hawk General Manager of Grid Computing, IBM "The GriPhyN and IVDGL projects are at the vanguard of science that is based on Grid computing, and therefore we rely heavily on the Globus Toolkit to ease management of and access to remote resources. Important physics instruments like the Large Hadron Collider produce massive datasets that require Grid-enabled distributed systems for real-time sharing of data and related assets. The advent of GT3 and OGSA means these systems can be increasingly customized, due to reliance on new standards that define precisely what Grid services are and can do. This enables the type of computational science that is a model for 21st century research in science and engineering." Paul Avery Principal Investigator, GriPhyN and IVDGL; Professor Physics, the University of Florida "HP has a long tradition of supporting open source tools, as evidenced by our development of the Linux IA-64 kernel. We support an open standards-based environment for the Grid and expect to contribute to the development of the Globus Toolkit both today and in the future, as the world evolves towards planetary-scale computing." Rich Friedrich Director, Internet Systems and Storage, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories “Web and Grid Service technologies offer great opportunities in Grid computing. The new GT3 building upon these technologies is a major step forward in bringing production-ready Grids to a larger community and a major asset for the future Grid projects which will follow and leverage the results of the EU DataGrid project" Fabrizio Gagliardi Head, EU DataGrid Project "As a Grid vendor and user, we want to help our customers take advantage of the same benefits we've reaped from grid computing. Oracle today has key technology differentiators that make us unique. Using commodity clusters on Linux, customers can benefit from mainframe computing at half the cost and achieve higher utilization. We've worked with the Globus Project to integrate the Globus Toolkit 2.2 with the Oracle database and look forward to continuing our work with them." Benny Souder Vice President, Distributed Database Development, Oracle Corporation “The release of GT3 is an important landmark in the integration of Web and Grid Services. In the case of OGSA-DAI, it provides essential building blocks for enabling database interoperability in a Grid environment.” Dave Pearson Program Manager, OGSA Database Access and Integration (DAI) Working Group "Over the past year, we have seen commercial acceptance of Grid computing continue to grow among our clients as enterprises such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, JPMorgan Chase and others realize its compelling business value. As part of our commitment to OGSA, Platform will continue to support Globus GT2 and ensure that future releases of Platform products and solutions are GT3 and OGSA-compliant, including Platform Globus." Ian Baird Chief Business Architect, Platform Computing Inc. and GGF Steering Committee Board Member "The Globus Toolkit continues to be the key to open, interoperable grids. I am excited to see GT3's release as it represents a major step forward in incorporating web services technologies with Globus, and provides a convenient way to integrate desktop grids such as Entropia's DCGrid into larger enterprise and cross-enterprise grids." Andrew Chien Chairman of the Board and Chief Technology Officer, Entropia "We are pleased with the progress of the GT3 and the advancement of OGSA. OGSA holds the potential to provide the grid community with strong basis for the rapid development of grid technologies and products. Our customers will benefit from the interoperability the standard will provide." Andrew Grimshaw Founder and Chief Technical Officer, Avaki "SGI congratulates the Globus Project on the release of GT3. We believe that it represents a major leap forward in bringing functionality to the Grid. SGI is committed to ongoing support of the Globus Tool Kit 3 and OGSA and will soon begin the process of validating GT3 on its newly released Altix 3000 family of servers and superclusters - the world's scalable machines for LINUX." Walter Stewart Silicon Graphics, Inc. Director of Business Development, SGI Canada Global Coordinator, SGI Grid Strategy "The OGSA standard is a breakthrough for the wide acceptance of Grid computing, ranging from Grid users and resource providers to Grid and Web Service developers. OGSA is especially important for our thousands of Sun customers who, during the past two years, have built grids within their enterprise or university campus. Now, with OGSA, it is much easier for them to enhance their grids by integrating Sun Grid Engine and the Grid Engine Portal with additional functionality - like the ones provided by GT3." Wolfgang Gentzsch Director of Grid Computing, Sun Microsystems