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Corporate Grid Computing Wins Backing Tech Giants Form a Group to Develop Software That Pools Resources

Posted on: Tuesday, 25 January 2005, 12:00 CST

A handful of technology companies including International Business Machines, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems were planning to announce Monday the formation of a consortium to accelerate the adoption of utility-like grid computing in the corporate world.

The group, called the Globus Consortium, will cooperatively develop software suited for business uses of grid computing, and educate companies about the technology and its potential.

Globus's software pools computing resources from many machines in the fashion of a virtual supercomputer to focus on one task. The Globus project was started in 1996 by scientists at research laboratories and universities. The government provided most of the early financing to develop the software, which is freely shared, open-source code.

Most of the momentum behind grid computing has come from research labs and universities that are tackling big scientific applications like climate modeling, high-energy physics, earthquake simulations and genetic research.

But companies are increasingly interested in the grid technology for commercial uses like financial risk analysis, oil exploration, utility-load simulations and drug research.

"The consortium is a corporate vote of confidence for and commitment to Globus software, with companies getting together to push this software," said Ian Foster, a senior scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory.

Foster, Carl Kesselman, director of the center for grid technologies at the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, and Steve Tuecke, a former software designer at the Argonne lab, created the basic standards for the Globus tool kit of software.

In another sign that open-source, grid technology is moving toward the commercial mainstream, the three men last month founded Univa, which will provide specialized software, services and support for Globus software.

Tuecke is the chief executive of Univa, while Foster and Kesselman are board members.

Another Argonne alumnus, Greg Nawrocki, will become the president of Globus Consortium, the new industry group. He said he hoped to increase the membership beyond the original six, which includes Univa and Nortel Networks.

"We're seeing the same pattern with grids that we saw with the Internet and Linux," Ken King, vice president for grid computing at IBM, said. "It starts in government labs and universities and then moves into broader commercial use."

One potential member for the consortium, Microsoft, has lent financial support to the Globus project in the past. But working with Globus, industry analysts say, is tricky for Microsoft. Globus is open-source software like Linux, which is a competitive alternative to Microsoft's Windows. A clear challenge for the new consortium, analysts say, will be to explain what grid computing is to a larger corporate audience. The essence of the technology is virtualization, a computing term that refers to clever software that lashes several machines together to focus on one task.

Source: International Herald Tribune

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