Grid computing and Web services could have a major impact on U.S. economic growth by stimulating high-performance demand for both computing and broadband networks, according to a coalition of leading technology firms.
The seven companies have banded together to study the impact of Grid computing and Web services on enterprise performance, broadband use and U.S. economic growth.
The Economic Strategy Institute study will be led by: David Dorman, CEO of AT&T; Jim Morgan, CEO of Applied Materials; Jamie Houghton, CEO of Corning; Jay Tenenbaum, Chairman of CommerceNet; Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM's General Manager, e-business on demand; Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel; and Scott Kriens, CEO of Juniper Networks.
ESI's study will evaluate how U.S. businesses and organizations are using and planning to use Grid computing and Web services to improve product development, business processes, collaboration with suppliers and partners, and outsourcing. The study will also examine how the use of broadband communications spurred by these technologies makes them "drivers" that may contribute to a surge in broadband use.
ESI will also look at how public services such as health care - the National Mammography Grid, for example - and U.S. consumer services firms are formulating plans to make Grid computing and Web services an integral part of future health care delivery and everyday life.
"ESI is excited about this study because we believe that Grid computing and Web Services have the potential to contribute to important productivity and cost improvements at the enterprise level that will result in significant new growth," said Robert Cohen, ESI fellow and project director. "This would also stimulate broadband demand and contribute to vigorous growth of U.S. technology firms."
Grid technology has already led to significant gains in productivity by reducing the time required to get products to market, slashing operating costs and streamlining complex product development, ESI said. The study will evaluate whether these trends at the micro level are likely to have visible impacts on key U.S. industries in the next eight years and result in higher U.S. GDP and productivity growth.
Grid computing and Web Services rely upon better broadband access and higher speed backbone networks. Many firms that use Grids have already upgraded their broadband connectivity. As a result, their broadband use has surged. The study will explore whether there is a direct connection between the use of Grid computing and Web services and growth in broadband demand. The study will document the connection between the applications as demand "drivers" for broadband use.
The study's final results will be available in December 2003. The project's steering committee will present some of the project's initial results in this spring. Plans include presentations on the policy implications for Congress and other policy makers.
For more information, visit econstrat.org.
Avaki Data Grid Deployed By Aventis
Global pharmaceutical company Aventis has chosen Avaki's Data Grid software to provide automated, secure, wide-area access to bioinformatics research data across multiple North American research sites, Avaki announced.
Avaki Data Grid automates the sharing of business-critical data resources, enabling users to significantly speed the performance of applications, the company said. The technology allows users to share research data without the need to manually compress and copy data files by making data available to multiple sites and administrative domains from its source location. The approach can help eliminate data inconsistency and synchronization challenges associated with multiple copies, and prevent unnecessary consumption of disk space and productivity delays, Avaki said.
"Life sciences organizations demand the ability to quickly and easily access huge amounts of data, regardless of where it resides, and securely share it in a timely and consistent fashion across their R&D teams," said Tim Yeaton, President of Avaki. "The Avaki Data Grid solution has been particularly appealing to life sciences organizations because of its unique ability to address the data-intensive work that drives the business processes of these organizations. We are extremely pleased to make this solution available to Aventis."
Altair Releases PBS Pro 5.3
Altair Engineering announced the launch of PBS Pro version 5.3, designed for the improved utilization of IT resources and skills at enterprises with numerically intense computing environments. Altair acquired PBS from Veridian recently.
PBS Pro, initially developed to manage aerospace computing resources at the NASA Ames Research Center, enables high performance workload management and batch queuing on Linux clusters. The product queues and schedules computation workload across complex networks to optimize hardware and software utilization while minimizing job turn-around times, Altair said.
PBS Pro has been enhanced to take advantage of new computing platforms and Grid technologies. New platform support for PBS Pro version 5.3 includes Intel Itanium 2 systems, Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and Macintosh OS X, and the product also contained enhanced Grid functionality for bi-directional support for Globus V2, Grid FTP via x509 certificates, and peer scheduling.
Other enhancements include: interoperation with Distributed Computing Environment; floating licenses managed with FlexLM; and an enhanced accounting and jobs reporting package.
GridIron Software Releases XLR8
GridIron Software has released of GridIron XLR8 version 1.0, an application development tool and runtime infrastructure for developing, using and managing software with the added speed of parallel distributed computing.
"GridIron's mission is to get distributed computing out of the lab and into mainstream use," said GridIron co-founder, president and CTO Steve Forde. "GridIron XLR8 puts the speed and power of a supercomputer into the hands of ordinary people who don't have computer science degrees, such as the professional animator making the next blockbuster feature film or a home computer user editing a wedding video."
The company said that GridIron XLR8 "is the first commercial solution for distributed computing designed to be embedded directly into an application. Users can take advantage of the speed of distributed processing without having to change the way they use their applications."
GridIron XLR8 uses a peer-to-peer architecture with "AutoGrid." GridIron XLR8 peers are software installed on computers contributing additional processing resources. The intelligent XLR8 peers discover each other and automatically set up a processing network, distribute work, and recover from failure. This autonomic capability eliminates the requirement for an administratively intensive middleware layer, making the solution simple to manage, the company said.
GridIron said the XLR8 API set makes it easy for software developers to embed distributed computing within an application. All of the job control logic can be defined and controlled through the use of six XLR8 job control functions and four job execution methods provided by application plug-ins. Additional XLR8 functions are available for data marshalling and OAM.
GridIron is offering the product under an open license. A complete and fully functioning version of XLR8, including documentation, APIs and the GridIron XLR8 runtime software, is available free for development and testing purposes. Once a developer has integrated XLR8 and is ready to release their software, they upgrade their license to use and commercially distribute XLR8.
The XLR8 APIs are available for C/C++ and Java. The XLR8 runtime software supports Mac OS X, Red Hat Linux and Windows XP and 2000 operating systems. For more information, visit gridironsoftware.com.
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