GRIDtoday Logo IBM

DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JULY 7, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 27

( Previous Article )    ( Table of Contents )   

Special Features:

GGF SCHOOL -- TRAINING A GRID WORKFORCE
by J.S. Hurley, Editor-at-Large

The growing interest in Grids as viable compute resource brokers is largely responsible for their acceptance beyond the traditional high performance computing (HPC) research community. As applications become more grid-enabled, the business community is expected to significantly increase its investments in Grid Computing over the next decade. This increasing demand for Grids coupled with continued advancements in middleware and networking technologies have begun to raise concerns about the availability of a qualified workforce to address Grid-related issues.

Noticeably absent until recently was an examination of the training needed for those involved in Grid implementation and deployment. There are a very limited number of programs dedicated to training Grid practitioners, internationally. Many of these programs are extensions of traditional Computer Science curriculums and primarily devoted to simply exposing students to fundamental Grid concepts. There is general agreement that, at a minimum, such training is necessary. However, increasingly, discussions are focusing on whether this approach is sufficient to handle the expected needs and demands of users as Grids continue to evolve.

A number of collective and individual efforts seeking to address training of potential Grid practitioners have been recently undertaken. We will highlight many of them in future issues. One such collective effort is sponsored by The Global Grid Forum (GGF) which will hold its 1st GGF School of Grid Computing in Vico Equense, Italy (near Naples) during the last two weeks of July 2003. This initiative, inspired by the success of the Grid track at the 2002 CERN School of Computing (see www.cern.ch/csc), will consist of lectures by experts in various aspects of grid middleware and grid applications and laboratory sessions in which the students will carry out practical exercises. The target audience consists of young researchers (from technical industries, research laboratories, and academic environments) who have recently started (or are about to start) working on grid research projects in Asia Pacific, Europe, and the US (see www.ggf.org).

Please see the link: www.dma.unina.it/~murli/SummerSchool/ for more details.

( Top of Page )

( Previous Article )    ( Table of Contents )