IBM has joined the Globus Project, an effort to write open-source grid-management software. Globus was spawned by researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Southern California, the University of Chicago and elsewhere. Globus and IBM will offer specifications for the forthcoming version 3.0 of its grid software tools at the Global Grid Forum, the key change from previous versions being the adoption of the Open Grid Services Architecture, Globus said. "The Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) is a proposed evolution of the current Globus Toolkit towards a grid system architecture based on an integration of grid and Web Services concepts and technologies," Globus says on its Web site. "Initial proposed technical specifications have been developed by the Globus Project and IBM, and are being put forward at the Global Grid Forum for discussion, refinement, and (we hope) eventual standardisation." Key improvements coming with OGSA will be tight integration with Sun's server version of Java, as well as with Web services and databases, Globus said. The group hopes to have the new tools done in 2003. IBM has also co-authored a paper called "The Physiology of the Grid" that describes OGSA. The IBM author, Jeffrey Nick, joins some of the seminal grid thinkers: Ian Foster of Argonne and the University of Chicago, Carl Kesselman of the University of Southern California, and Steven Teucke of Argonne. The paper, still in draft form, is essentially a blueprint for unifying Web services and grids using Web Services Description Language and other technologies. But IBM is not the only company involved in grid computing. Microsoft, which hosted an earlier grid forum meeting, is interested in grid security and has been quietly working to see how the authentication services offered by its Passport service work with grids. Other grid backers include Platform Computing and Entropia, whose software lets not just massive servers but also ordinary PCs participate in the grid's promise of distributed computing. Sun's involvement
Friday, Sun announced a major step in unifying its Web services effort, built into its iPlanet software, and its grid software, acquired in 2000 and released as open source in 2001. Sun said its iPlanet Portal Server software now can control its Grid Engine software, a key step in the vision of being able to control how much computing power services get. The idea is to make this as easy as turning a faucet to control how much water comes out of a tap. The move makes Grid Engine part of the Sun One collection of software. The announcement dovetails with Sun's N1 project to treat data centers crammed with servers and storage systems as a single, gigantic computer. On Monday, Sun and IBM will join rivals HP and Compaq in announcing support for a grid standard developed by start-up Avaki. The standard, called the Secure Grid Naming Protocol, governs how files are located within the sea of storage systems on a grid and makes sure files can be accessed only by authorised users. Avaki's chief technology officer and founder, Andrew Grimshaw, has been working on grid technology for years. He also advises Sun on its nascent Jxta software, which lets nodes on a network such as a grid communicate.
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