Oracle's interest in forming a commercial Grid consortium, announced at OracleWorld last week, prompted a response from the standards-setting Global Grid Forum and support from an industry analyst.
Chuck Rozwat, Oracle EVP for server technologies, told OracleWorld attendees that the company is "interested in forming a commercial Grid consortium so that, together with other members of the industry, we can define standards that make up the APIs and functions for the commercial Grid computing infrastructure."
Rozwat later said that Oracle - which is a member of the Grid Forum - is not trying to compete with GGF, but to set up an organization with a more commercial focus.
Charlie Catlett of Argonne National Laboratory, chair of the Global Grid Forum, said he hopes to discuss the issue with Oracle.
"My hope is that a dialogue would show Oracle that building strong, commercially useful software and services based on open standards is something that is at the heart of the work being done by both research and commercial leaders in GGF," Catlett said in a statement posted on the GGF Web site. "If, after a dialogue, it turns out another standards body is necessary, then the community will have had the benefit of coordinating from the very beginning."
Catlett said 40% of GGF participants are from industry, and two-thirds of GGF sponsoring organizations are commercial companies. GGF participants also include end-user companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Boeing, DaimlerChrysler, Merrill Lynch, Eli Lilly, and Ford Motor Company, he said, and IBM and Fujitsu are among the companies with strong participation in the forum.
"The most successful groups are co-chaired by a person from the research sector working along side a person from the commercial sector," Catlett wrote. "We believe this partnering between commercial and research leaders in an open, public forum is essential to developing useful, widely accepted standards."
"Commercial and science applications both use the same Internet and Web technology, the same microprocessor and storage technologies, and the same operating systems technologies," Catlett said. "Commercial and science Grid applications are also very similar. Whether your Grid environment is intra-company or between many companies, there are fundamental security technologies that are common. The differences are not in the underlying standards, but in the use of those standards within a particular context, and those differences also exist in scientific Grids."
There is a higher tolerance for failure in science and research applications than in commercial applications, Catlett noted. "This is precisely the reason that new architectures and technologies have often been 'proven' first in the research realm and then later adopted by commercial applications. The Internet, parallel computers, clustered computing, the Web and Web browsers and Grid technology are all examples of breakthrough technologies that have begun in the research environment, moved to open standards, and then applied to business applications. That is what we are seeing with Grid standards and GGF, and it's been happening on a very fast timescale."
Catlett said there will be a number of commercial events at Global Grid Forum 9 October 5-8 in Chicago, including sessions on Business Process Grid; Configuration Description, Deployment, and Lifecycle Management; Workflow Management; Grid API; Life Sciences Applications Requirements; and Designing and Developing Grid Services.
"The nearly 50 companies sponsoring GGF and at least 50 more who are actively engaged, are working together to develop Grid standards that will create a marketplace for Grid-enabled commercial business applications," Catlett concluded. "My hope is that Oracle will help us steer this exciting effort, and I would welcome a discussion on how we can work together."
Analyst Supports Commercial Group
Analyst Ahmar Abbas of Grid Technology Partners said he supports forming a new group, noting a "serious disconnect between the academic and research leaders and those leading the charge to commercialize Grid computing. The Global Grid Forum has not been able to deliver on this since its formation 36 months ago. While it has garnered sponsorship from IBM, HP, Sun and others, there are no more than a couple of ISVs and just a few representatives from the commercial Grid user community involved with the GGF. GGF meetings still draw 80-90% of people from the academic and research community."
Abbas suggested as a model the Optical Internetworking Forum established in 1998 by the telecommunications service provider community. The OIF's stated mission is to: encourage cooperation among telecom industry participants, including equipment manufacturers, telecom service providers and end users; promote global development of optical internetworking products; promote nationwide and worldwide compatibility and interoperability; encourage input to appropriate national and international standards bodies; and identify, select, and augment as appropriate and publish optical internetworking specifications drawn from national and international standards.
"OIF today has over 250 members and has successfully released numerous implementation agreements and conducted extensive interoperability events," Abbas said. The OIF also maintains liaisons with the IETF, IEEE, TMF and other standards bodies.
"The future Grid consortium should likewise bring together ISVs and hardware vendors with the enterprise user community so that Grid computing can begin to deliver its promise of tremendous productivity gains to companies," Abbas said. The consortium could have liaisons with the Global Grid Forum, IETF, OASIS and other standards bodies, he said.
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