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Avaki Corporation and the Globus Project, a research and development project focused on enabling the application of grid concepts to scientific and engineering computing, today announced an agreement to collaborate on the development of OGSI-conformant grid software components for integration into Avaki Data Grid software. The results of this collaborative effort will enable Avaki to deliver the industry's first OGSI standards-compliant version of commercial data grid software. This groundbreaking agreement between a commercial grid vendor and the open grid software community represents a major advancement toward a common set of standards and interoperability, providing benefits for both Avaki customers and Globus Toolkit users worldwide. "The Globus Toolkit 3.0 and its embrace of the emerging OGSA standard is an important milestone in Grid," said Dan Powers, vice president of Grid strategy for IBM. "We're pleased that Avaki is working with Globus to develop an OGSI-conformant version of its software, and we expect other companies to do the same as the Globus Toolkit and OGSA gain momentum in the market." According to today's announcement, Avaki and the Globus Project will incorporate technology from the Globus Toolkit 3.0 into Avaki's data grid software to enable the Avaki Data Grid software to conform with key grid computing standards now under development within the Global Grid Forum (GGF). These standards include the Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI), the base infrastructure on which the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) is built. OGSA is architecture for the integration of grid and web services concepts and technologies. "Avaki provides a model of collaboration with the Grid community in its adoption of OGSI", said Fran Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center. "Through this effort, Globus Toolkit users will have the option to extend their Globus Toolkit-based grids by easily integrating Avaki products." Avaki grid software provides end users with wide area access to data, compute power, and applications. Avaki Data Grid 3.0, released last month, creates a federated data service which enables the secure sharing of data among wide-area, multi-organizational users and applications. With Avaki Data Grid, companies eliminate costly organizational and technical barriers to data sharing, while creating a flexible, J2EE-based access infrastructure that installs quickly and easily and scales to meet business requirements. The Globus Project's version 3 of the Globus Toolkit, GT 3.0, provides an open source, OGSI-compliant implementation of a rapidly growing range of Grid services. GT 3.0 offers the grid community security, resource discovery, data grid, scheduling and other capabilities essential for worldwide grid deployments. Avaki and the Globus Project cooperate at the working group level within the GGF to discuss, define and ratify open grid standards; today's announcement makes explicit their plans to conform with those standards by incorporating elements of the Globus Toolkit 3.0 into Avaki's commercially-available data grid software. Avaki's conformance to OGSI ensures that users of Avaki's data grid software will benefit from interoperability with other OGSI-compliant technologies and products. These include technologies developed in the Globus Project organization, in the broader GGF community, and among commercial software vendors who may choose to follow Avaki's lead in adopting the standard. Organizations that have implemented the Globus Toolkit will be able to add a commercially-supported data grid, Avaki Data Grid 3.0, to their implementations. "This is an important step for Avaki because OGSI will be the preferred way we interoperate with other vendors that provide grid services," said Andrew Grimshaw, CTO and founder of Avaki. "OGSA will provide a complete framework for grid services and we anticipate growing momentum for vendors to build applications and services that meet these standards." "I am delighted to see Avaki, a leader in commercial grid software, embracing the Globus Toolkit for OGSA-enabling their data grid products," said Ian Foster, who heads the Distributed Systems Lab at Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago. "More than just an affirmation of our technology, this is a striking illustration of how open standards, open software and commercial products are together creating the grid revolution. I look forward to further collaboration with Avaki on our OGSA-based Globus Toolkit 3.0."