DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / OCTOBER 13, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 41    ( Table of Contents )

Special Features:

GT04 -- FIRST MAJOR COMMERCIAL GRID EVENT

Grid Today 2004 (Gt04), the first major conference and exhibition to focus on the emerging market for commercial business applications of Grid computing, will be held May 24-26, 2004, at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. The conference is expected to attract more than 4,000 business and technical professionals from organizations of all sizes interested in understanding the benefits and challenges of deploying Grid computing.

As part of the event's focus on linking those who are enabling Grid computing with those who will use Grid computing in commercial environments, Gt04 will include a special VIP program for CIOs from some of the largest industrial organizations worldwide, who will participate in a full day of VIP presentations discussing the current state of Grid deployment and the roadmap for various Grid enabling technologies. Organizations stand to realize tremendous efficiency gains and productivity improvements from Grid computing, but the CIOs and other IT decision makers face the challenge of integrating hardware, middleware, networks, and industry standards to enable wide-spread adoption. Gt04 will address these challenges head on, with expert panels representing the latest in technology along with experienced commercial users.

According to Shahin Kahn, vice president for High Performance and Technical Computing at Sun Microsystems, "CIOs want to avoid cost and reduce complexity, and they want a Grid infrastructure so they never again face the problem of too many under-utilized systems in one place and not enough capacity somewhere else. Gt04 will be a great place to see the state of the art and learn the best practices."

Gt04's Platinum Sponsor is Sun Microsystems. Other participating sponsors include Butterfly.net, HP, IDC and Intel.

Grid Computing: The Next Big Thing

Grid computing links many different communities of computing resources into one large virtual community that provides a variety of computing resources to the users in the enterprise. Parallels are often made with electric power grids, wherein electricity is treated as a commodity that can be purchased in quantities, when so desired.

For example, when GM's facilities in Europe are closed for business, the unused compute resources can be redirected to satisfy the compute-intensive needs within GM worldwide -- effectively converting a communications network into a computational network. Grid computing is considered one of the major technological leaps of the 21st century because it puts the key to enormous computing power into the hands of everyone -- at a reasonable price.

As global organizations face tremendous pressure to increase IT efficiency during challenging economic times, Grid computing offers the potential to achieve higher throughput and a better return on both departmental and enterprise-wide IT investments. In business-critical environments, Grid computing is increasingly becoming the desired approach to improving an organization's productivity while offering a significant return on initial enterprise computing investments. According to industry analysts, the market for Grid computing is expected to expand tenfold in the next four years. In a survey by Summit Strategies, nearly two-thirds of 180 companies polled are aware of Grids; half plan to evaluate Grids within the year.

"The long view on Grid computing is that it, like several revolutionary developments before it, will permeate all aspects of future computing -- that industry, government and academic institutions will all take part in its construction and its use," said Rick Stevens, division director of mathematics and computer science at Argonne National Laboratory, and computer science professor at the University of Chicago. "As any new technology starts to migrate from the research and scientific spawning grounds to the demanding business environments of the commercial computing markets, confusion between myth and reality can lead to widespread frustration and inefficient implementations. We believe Gt04 will be an invaluable executive education forum to help the commercial computing industry IT planners understand realistic technology expectations, time frames and road maps."

According to Tom Wicks, senior manager of computer science at The Boeing Company, "Geographic and even organizational boundaries as they relate to sharing of computer resources could eventually be non-existent with the tremendous promise of Grid computing. Grid computing communities are rallying worldwide to develop and deploy this next important wave of distributed computing. It's only smart business to get involved at this stage and Gt04 should prove to be an excellent and much-needed forum to help establish the adoption of commercial Grid computing."

Emerging Grid technologies are being considered or deployed for numerous applications, including: pharmaceutical companies that are analyzing elaborate DNA sequences to develop highly tailored and safer drugs; automobile makers that simulate car crashes to improve design times and improve automotive safety; aircraft designers that are optimizing aerodynamic structural designs, particularly wing shape; brokerages that run "what if" scenarios on client portfolios with every market fluctuation; oil companies now analyzing massive amounts of geological data to determine the most promising drilling locations; and online gaming, which enables millions of gamers worldwide to play together in real-time, immersive, three-dimensional worlds.

"The timing for Gt04 is perfect," said David Levine, CEO of Butterfly.net. "We believe 2004 will be a pivotal year for the early adoption cycle of Grid computing in the gaming industry. Understanding the potential benefits of Grid implementation, as well as the possible barriers, will be key to our IT planning for the remainder of this decade."

"For decades, academia, government organizations, and commercial enterprises have independently hammered out their own plans for high-performance computing," said Charlie Catlett, chair of the Global Grid Forum (GGF, www.ggf.org), the leading organization setting Grid-related standards and specifications. "GGF's success is in large part bringing these communities together. We have seen the commercial interest in Grid technologies and applications within GGF, where in four years the commercial participation in GGF has grown from 5 percent to 40 percent and companies represent two-thirds of our growing list of 70 sponsoring member organizations. The technologists and end users working to develop standards in GGF are close enough to see the realistic picture of what Grid systems will be able to deliver, and Gt04 will be a tremendous avenue for spreading this understanding into the corporate decision makers who don't have the time to follow the rapidly evolving details."

Several communities, commercial enterprises in particular, stand to benefit from participation in Gt04.

"While a number of conferences and events have featured detailed discussions of Grid enabling technologies, no one has addressed the commercial applications and business implications of Grid computing," said Mike Bernhardt of the Noblemen Group and Gt04 conference program director. "We've heard from many early users of commercial Grid environments who are asking for this orientation. We plan to establish the Grid Today event as a catalyst to the widespread adoption of commercial Grid computing. Furthermore, Gt04 is being designed to complement the technical development programs of key Grid community organizations such as the Global Grid Forum and Globus."

Gt04 is expected to attract a large number of both commercial and technical high-end computing users from industries such as automotive, aerospace, energy, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail and pharmaceutical. While some other conferences have focused on academic and government use of Grid technologies, this will be the first conference devoted to the implementation of commercial Grid applications and addressing the challenges of transferring technology and support from the academic and government communities.

More information on Gt04 is available at www.gridtoday.com or info@gt04.com; for Gt04 program or speaking opportunities, write speakers@gt04.com ; for sponsorship opportunities, write sponsors@gt04.com; and for exhibitor information, write exhibits@gt04.com.

Gt04 is produced by Tabor Communications, which is online at www.tgc.com.

For more information, contact:

Mike Bernhardt, Gt04 Conference Program Director, (503)384-0220, mikeb@gridtoday.com