NextGRID: From Compute Grids to Grid SOAs and beyond Dr Mark Parsons Commercial Director - EPCC and NeSC NextGRID Project Chairman

The Grid Today Is a huge success for both business and science Significant business adoption of cluster Grids - “mature technology” – Merrill Lynch But we see different facets The scientific community has embraced collaboration and new applications The business community has embraced resource management and provision

Conflicting messages Grid is sold on two conflicting messages: 1. Invest in new applications on the Grid and they will enable completely new ways of working and transform your business 2. Invest in the Grid and it will greatly lower the total cost of your IT infrastructure It’s no surprise only the second message has been grasped by business to date Which is why Grid SOAs are only being adopted very slowly

Grid offering services Grid Research Vision Next Generation Grid Experts group: ftp://ftp.cordis.lu/pub/ist/docs/ngg_eg_final.pdf Transparent and reliable Persistent, pervasive and ubiquitous Open to wide user & provider communities Secure, with trust across multiple domains Easy to use, configure and manage Person-centric yet Scalable Standards based Grid offering services European citizens Grid service providers The Grid vision expands on the sharing vision of the web. Here anyone can be a provider, anyone can be a customer. Importantly, it defines the standards required to let everyone work together. Explain why this is a good model Analogies with the subcontracting model in business In the Grid computing model, businesses need to own fewer of their own resources. Third parties provide facilities (Grid service providers); users get access to services. Businesses can also offer services over the Grid, an extension to the electricity grid analogy. Private sector Public sector

The Grid tomorrow NextGRID focuses on Grid for business Vision is of future Grids: that are economically viable; in which new and existing business models are possible; in which development, deployment and maintenance are easy; and in which the provisions for security and privacy give confidence to businesses, consumers and the general public.

Creating the next generation Grid If defining architecture was easy there would be no NextGRID Innovation is crucial Key stages conceptualisation design experimentation analysis Implementing this cyclical process has been central to developing the NextGRID architecture

Three key architectural principles Service Level Agreements central to the conceptual model of NextGRID all interactions between services are predicated by a bipartite SLA Dynamic Grid infrastructure extensive capabilities for dynamic service composition and federation are provided Minimal set of capabilities a set of capabilities are defined that a NextGRID service can expect to find in a NextGRID environment

SLAs All interactions are predicated by the agreement of a bipartite SLA

SLAs (cont) Multiple service relationships are foreseen

Architectural components Allows composed services to deliver business value Dynamic Orchestrators (discovery, workflow, invocation, etc) Protects services and bipartite relationships Management Systems and SLAs Data-centric Functional Systems Dynamic Trust and Security Defines services provided over bipartite relationships Allows consistent description and management of all applications Base standards (http, wsdl, soap, naming, notification, addressing, policy, security…) Provides basic facilities and interoperability

Electronic Data Record (EDR) Processing NextGRID Application Areas Digital Media (DM) Financial Applications: Supply Chain Management (SCM) Electronic Data Record (EDR) Processing Images provided by Dreamstime.com, SAP, Kino, GridSystems

Key outputs Architectural Component Designs Generalised Specifications Grid Standards resulting from and influenced by NextGRID Generalised Specifications Experience Software Components Case Studies Download Generalised Specifications at: http://www.nextgrid.org

The Grid of the future Service orientation brings collaborative Grids within reach of business In NextGRID we’ve focussed on Flexible Business Models  Specific QoS Terms Dynamic Security  Dynamic Composition Economic Sustainability  Privacy Facilitated Management  Interactivity Support Next steps are to create Service Oriented Knowledge Utilities - SOKUs

Service Oriented Knowledge Utilities In going from Grids  SOKU you need to re-evaluate what a Grid is SOKU’s are built from cooperating services In a SOKU everything is a service – including the application There are many similarities between SOKUs and Agent-style technologies The difference being that SOKUs may deliver where agent’s haven’t …

Key technical challenges SOKU lifecycle management robust, efficient, context aware services high-levels of interoperability, smooth composition and automatic self-organisation of software are required management of functional and non-functional properties Underpinning semantic technologies we are only at the beginning of the use of semantics to bridge the gap from human to computer Adaptability, dependability and scalability we need to rethink our design paradigms Trust and security

Key non-technical challenges Lack of real business user engagement Useful infrastructures get stuck in outdated technology Already happening with some EU Grid infrastructures Lack of standardisation Without standards Grid SOAs will always remain within single organisations Lack of long-term research policy Need to keep the faith over 10+ years

Summary Current research work is putting in place many of the underpinning technologies required to move the Grid forward to build SOKUs Many of these are complex research issues There is much to do before we realise even simple SOKUs Key factor in success will be engagement with real end-users and service providers We need real business challenges to help us design the next generation of Grid SOAs