Greetings Economists,
Distributed computing through the grid is a reference to the super
computing networks laid down, and being extended to the public. Note the
different competing business interests listed below.
thanks,
Doyle Saylor
February 19, 2002
Grid Project to Wed Web Services
By STEVE LOHR New York Times
A worldwide computing project known as grid, whose long-term vision is to
bring the power of supercomputing to individuals, is taking a step out of
the laboratory and into the commercial mainstream.
In a paper that was presented yesterday at a conference in Toronto, four
computer scientists laid out a plan for marrying their grid technology for
distributed computing with so-called Web services � the technical standards
that major computer companies are betting on to deliver a new generation of
offerings on the Internet.
Web services promise a new level of computerized automation and convenience
to companies and consumers over the Internet, all made possible by special
software. A Web service application might, for example, enable a company's
inventory database to talk to a supplier's for automatic reordering. Another
application might allow an individual's personal calendar to communicate
with the appointment database of a doctor to automatically schedule a
checkup.
The grid technology has grown up over the last few years mainly in
government supercomputer centers and university laboratories. The notion of
computing power as an electricity-like utility, available anytime and
anywhere, has long been pursued. The grid, which takes its name from the
utility analogy, is a computing concept that first surfaced in the 1950's.
And computer time-sharing � fashionable both intellectually and on Wall
Street in the 1960's � was an earlier incarnation of the distributed
computing vision that the grid's advocates are chasing.
Yet continuing advances in processing power, network capacity and software,
the grid scientists say, have finally brought the long-sought ideal of
distributed computing within reach. A comparatively simple, but well-known
distributed computing application is the SETI@home program, begun in 1999,
which harnesses the power of millions of personal computers to seek signs of
extraterrestrial intelligence.
The grid researchers in the labs have used their technology to enable
far-flung groups of scientists to collaborate on complex projects that
require lots of computing firepower including climate modeling, high-energy
physics, genetic research and earthquake simulations.
The software that has allowed the sharing of computing resources and
information in scientific grid programs is called Globus, a software
development project that uses the open-source model, in which programmers
from around the world freely share ideas, code and bug fixes.
Still, the grid technology has been tailored to only specialized scientific
applications so far. The paper, presented at the Global Grid Forum in
Toronto, laid out a technical framework for taking the grid technology
squarely into the more commercial world of Web services. These Web services
are based on a series of industry-standard protocols � XML, SOAP, WDSL and
UDDI � for describing, identifying and communicating data over the Web.
The paper's title was "The Physiology of the Grid: An Open Grid Services
Architecture for Distributed Systems Integration." It defined, in the
language of Web services, how to build Web service applications that can
flourish in the distributed computing environment of the grid.
Draft versions of the paper have been on the Web for weeks, seeking comments
from the academic and corporate research communities. The Globus project �
led by Ian Foster, a senior scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory in
Chicago, and Carl Kesselman, director of the center for grid technologies at
the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute � has
welcomed and encouraged the research contribution and financial support of
computer companies.
An I.B.M. (news/quote) researcher, Jeffrey M. Nick, was one of four authors
of the grid paper, along with Mr. Foster, Mr. Kesselman and Steven Tuecke, a
scientist at the Argonne lab.
I.B.M. and Microsoft (news/quote), along with three specialist companies,
Platform Computing, Entropia and Avaki, are expected to announce their
support for the grid architecture to integrate Web services. Other companies
are expected to follow their lead.
"The emerging commercial support is going to accelerate the process of
moving grid technologies out of the lab and into the mainstream," said Mr.
Foster of the Argonne lab.
The long-range goal, Mr. Foster explained, is "to transform the use of
computing by putting in place concepts, infrastructure, and tools that can
enable resource sharing on a large scale."
The established companies are supporting the Globus software project for
different business reasons. I.B.M., for example, has embraced the major
open-source efforts like the Linux operating system, in part to undermine
rivals with strong operating system businesses, Microsoft and Sun
Microsystems (news/quote).
For Microsoft, the business motivation is more complicated. Globus is an
open-source project, whose software in research labs often runs on computers
using Linux, a competitor to Microsoft's Windows. But Microsoft sees its
future as increasingly dependent on the rise of Web services, whose
communications protocols allow the software of many vendors to share data
and interoperate.
So, Microsoft executives say, they see the grid as creating a larger
software "ecosystem" � or market, in business terms � in which Microsoft
offerings can thrive.
