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WESTBORO, Mass. -- Ascential Software Corporation (NASDAQ:ASCL) , the enterprise integration leader, today announced that it is the first enterprise integration software provider to join the Global Grid Forum ("GGF"), an industry association formed to advance grid computing. "Grid computing is a significant emerging technology and we are very glad that Ascential Software has joined with other technology visionaries to promote and support the development, deployment, and implementation of grid computing," said Mary Spada, GCF's vice chairman, operations, and program manager, strategic initiatives, for the Mathematics and Computational Sciences division of Argonne National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory operated by the University of Chicago. "Ascential's enterprise integration expertise is a valuable contribution to GCF's efforts to establish and document specifications and best-practices for computational grids." "Ascential's participation in the Global Grid Forum positions us to shape, advance, and commercialize this exciting information technology in ways that are imminently valuable to our customers and partners," said Jim Welch, vice president of engineering, Ascential Software. "Establishing standards is a major milestone in broad market acceptance of grid computing and the subsequent advent of new applications that process far larger volumes of information than is now possible." Grid computing has the potential to lower costs and boost efficiencies of computing networks by expanding resources, allocating processing power wherever it is needed, anywhere in the world, increasing storage capacity, and enhancing data exchange. Ascential will apply its expertise in parallel computing and enterprise integration to help formulate standards that ensure the creation of scalable, high-throughput commercial computing grids. "The promise of grid computing brings with it greater enterprise integration challenges as data volume, types, sources, and other demands increase. Ascential's data profiling, quality, transformation and large-scale parallel processing solutions help our customers address these challenges. Many are doing so more frequently on grid computers, or are evaluating the grid approach, and our role in the Global Grid Forum gives us the opportunity to share our knowledge with colleagues and customers alike to our mutual benefit," said Welch.