1. Current and Future Perspectives of Grid Technology Panel
Advanced Research Workshop on High Performance Computing
Cetraro June
Geoffrey Fox
Community Grids Lab
Indiana University

2. Questions I Is it wise or risky to start a new Grid?
There are no significant dangers if one adopts a conservative technology strategy
Use the basic service architecture; including applications
Use simple Web Services starting with those in WS-I
Others will be added and can be classified in terms of risk of adoption and probability of change
Use proven capabilities such as Condor, Globus 2, GridFTP, GridRPC; RGMA, SRB, OGSA-DAI, UNICORE good but less clear; risk depends on project of course
Use workflow model and expect BPEL to win but be incomplete
Use portlet architecture for user interfaces
Build services as small as possible and match choice of services and interfaces to others (OGSA?)
Use messaging where possible; avoid frameworks
Performance will improve; SOAP can use fastest transport

3. Status of WS-Standards
In order of increasing risk, we start with
WS-Interoperability Profile 1.0a (SOAP, WSDL, UDDI).
WS-Security being added gradually
WS-Reliability and WS-ReliableMessaging are generally believed to be technically close, and sound. The risk of adopting one of them is therefore relatively low.
BPEL is an important, emerging, widely-supported workflow specification though it is not yet a standard.
There are then some standards were Microsoft and IBM agree but others (Sun, Oracle often) do not
WS-Addressing, WS-Policy, WS-MetadataExchange, WS-Federation, WS-Coordination, WS-Atomic Transactions, WS-BusinessActivity. Implementations of these are available from both IBM and Microsoft,

4. Questions II What are Pacing Items: Problems with existing Middleware:
Several efforts are focusing on building robust middleware – VDT, Globus, NSF NMI, UK OMII, EU EGEE, WS-? From industry
Just be patient and don’t “jump the gun” – not necessary
Standards will take a while as not enough experience
Initial Grids can use current “initial software”
Scarcity of people:
Doubtful in USA: we need jobs!!
Security Concerns
Security consensus and technology most serious problem for Grids. Other problems have clearer engineering solutions
Policy for sharing resources
There are security issues and some fields are not familiar with sharing observational data but it hasn’t bothered my projects

5. Questions III How long will it take for Grids to be prevalent
Grids, P2P, Enterprise systems, Utility computing. Web services will intermingle and merge. If we call the amalgam a Grid it will become prevalent in 3-5 years in “pretty big” Science; longer in a broader environment
Good software for “many” of important services should be available in 2 years
What is your one wish
That collaborative/community Grids become sufficiently good that one doesn’t need to travel as much
Last mile networking is critical!