Grid computing – the next phase of distributed computing
Grid computing is increasingly being viewed as the next phase of distributed
computing. Built on pervasive Internet standards, grid computing enables
organizations to share computing and information resources across department
and organizational boundaries in a secure, highly efficient manner.
Organizations around the world are utilizing grid computing today in such
diverse areas as collaborative scientific research, drug discovery, financial risk
analysis, and product design. Grid computing enables research-oriented
organizations to solve problems that were infeasible due to computing and
data-integration constraints. Grids also reduce costs through automation and
improved IT resource utilization. Finally, grid computing can increase an
organization’s agility, enabling more efficient business processes and greater
responsiveness to change. Over time grid computing will enable a more
flexible, efficient and utility-like global computing infrastructure.
The key to realizing the benefits of grid computing is standardization, so that
the diverse resources that make up a modern computing environment can be
discovered, accessed, allocated, monitored, and in general managed as a single
virtual system—even when provided by different vendors and/or operated by
different organizations.
Standardization of grid computing is being lead by the Global Grid Forum
(GGF). GGF has developed the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) and is
working throughout the industry to champion this “architectural blueprint” and
the associated specifications that will enable the pervasive adoption of grid
computing for business and research worldwide.
OGSA: The blueprint for industry standard grid computing
Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) is the industry blueprint that enables
information and resource sharing across departments and between
organizations utilizing products from a variety of different vendors. It also
serves as an integration point for collaboration between the various standards
bodies engaged in delivering on the vision of industry-standard distributed
computing.
OGSA is based on an extensive set of use cases from research and industry. Use
cases drive the definition and prioritization of OGSA services and help to
document the rationale for architectural choices. For instance, a common use
case within IT organizations today revolves around the migration toward a
shared services and infrastructure model. Many organizations today deploy a
series of IT “silos” mirroring the departmental structure of the organization.
Each department may have dedicated resources (compute, application,
network, storage) to automate specific functions such as finance, customer
relationship management, supply chain or product design. This rigid model
results in low IT resource utilization, serious information integration
challenges, and high IT spending. In addition, some departments within an
organization are increasingly being required to integrate with customers,
suppliers and partners on collaborative research, design, supply chain
optimization, and/or transaction initiatives in order to produce world-class
products and deliver them efficiently in the marketplace. Therefore it must be
possible to repurpose the IT infrastructure easily and efficiently to meet
emerging business needs.
With OGSA, organizations now have a blueprint for combining heterogeneous IT
resources across multiple departments or between organizations utilizing open,
industry standards. Adherence to OGSA ensures that information and resource
sharing can occur across organizational silos utilizing a variety of vendor’s
offerings.
OGSA specifies eight categories of services, each of which is essential to
coordinating the work of applications interacting with available resources in a
shared, but secure environment.

Infrastructure Services provide a uniform foundation for the services
described in the remaining seven categories with standard methods of
transporting, naming, managing, and describing internet-based services.
For instance, grids use infrastructure services to enable communication
between disparate computers, applications from different vendors and
databases with different design characteristics, essentially removing
proprietary barriers to distributed computing.

Resource Management enables the monitoring, reservation, deployment,
and configuration of grid resources according to quality of service
requirements. Grids allow organizations to pool their departmental IT
resources and make them available for efficient and dynamic use across the
organization.

Data Services move data where it is needed, manage replicated copies, run
queries and updates, and transform data into new formats as needed. As a
result, users or applications experience seamless access to their data
regardless of physical location.

Context Services define the circumstances under which the grid serves
different customers; context services implement the "ploicy" of the grid. A
grid can only serve multiple departments if the IT requirements of that
department can be described in a way meaningful to that department's
task. Context services describe the required resources and usage policies
that each department requires to carry out its duties.

Information Services provide efficient production of, and access to,
information about the Grid and its resources. In the virtual world of grids,
information about the availability or lack of availability, of a particular
resource is critical. An infrastructure manager cannot effectively
troubleshoot a grid without this valuable information.

Self-Management Services support service-level attainment for a set of
services (or resources) – with as much automation as possible, to reduce the
costs and complexity of managing the system. These services make the
concept of “on-demand” resources a reality by automating the allocation of
additional storage or compute power to meet stated levels of service.

Security Services enforce security policies within a (virtual) organization,
promoting safe resource-sharing and appropriate authentication and
authorization of users. Department management can be assured that their
sensitive data is seen only by appropriate end-users, in spite of physical
resource sharing between multiple departments.

Execution Management Services manage compute tasks, including
placement onto resources, provisioning of the resources, and maintenance
of the task lifecycle. These services enable the complex workflows that
modern-day organizations require for many of their compute tasks.
OGSA, has emerged from the work of individuals from over 60 companies and as
many research organizations - experts working shoulder-to-shoulder with
commercial product designers and developers. OGSA version 1 is an
informational document that provides an overview of the service categories
required for grid deployment. A companion document of OGSA Use Cases is
also available. The information contained in these documents is being used by
related standards organizations, open source and packaged software vendors
along with end-users of grids to ensure that they stay in sync with
standardization efforts. OGSA version 1 will be refined further in version 2,
scheduled for initial release in March of 2005.
Both versions of OGSA are a product of the Global Grid Forum (GGF), the
largest community of grid users and developers. GGF is comprised of thousands
of individuals from hundreds of organizations leading the global standardization
effort for grid computing.
We encourage your involvement in the development of OGSA and the use of
OGSA-based products. The back of this flyer contains contact information for
the organizations supporting OGSA, including telephone numbers and email
addresses that will put you directly in touch with key individuals responsible for
OGSA’s propagation.
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Use Cases
At the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, grid computing is used in
simulations and analysis to accelerate time-to-market for digital technology
and biotechnology products.
Royal Bank Insurance uses grid systems to reduce the time needed for certain
actuarial calculations from 18 hours to 32 minutes.
Monsanto is using grid computing for developing agricultural and chemical
products and reporting a 10 percent cost saving over conventional processing
architectures.
Societe Generale uses grid computing systems to serve its European branches
across the continent at lower cost, with increased efficiency, and most
importantly for a bank, greater reliability of services.
Charles Schwab uses grid computing to reduce the time it takes to deliver its
services to customers. Typical is the reduction in time for one business process
from four minutes to 15 seconds.
Leading automakers – including Toyota, DaimlerChrysler, Nissan, Ford, BMW,
and GM – all use grid computing to develop and virtually test new body designs
and engineering features, dramatically shortening the car development
lifecycle.
Microsoft uses a massive network of PCs in a grid configuration to test its
software applications during the development process and prior to sale.
Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), like Everquest and Second Life,
use grid computing to support thousands of players simultaneously, a feat that
could not otherwise be economically accomplished.