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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Special Features:
GRID, WEB SERVICES STANDARDS TO
CONVERGE
Akamai, The Globus Alliance, HP, IBM, Sonic Software and TIBCO proposed new
Web services specifications that will integrate Grid and Web services
standards. The new WS-Notification and WS-Resource Framework represent the
first time a common, standards-based infrastructure will be available for
business applications, Grid resources and systems management. These new
specifications will help customers lower costs, speed deployment and enable
integration across and outside of the enterprise.
"These new Web services specifications will significantly extend the types
of
enterprise solutions customers can easily deploy," said Karla Norsworthy,
director of Dynamic e-Business Technologies at IBM. "These new specifications
are important for key business applications and provide customers with the
ability to utilize a common Web services based infrastructure that support of
Grid and management based solutions."
"Web services technology is a key enabler of the Adaptive Enterprise, where
business processes and IT are synchronized to capitalize on change. Customers
want information technology to behave as a highly efficient, flexible service
that can quickly accommodate change in real time," said Al Smith, chief
technology officer of Management Software Organization at HP. "The flexibility
of an open, standards-based approach is the only way to bring together
heterogeneous resources into an effective, manageable IT environment."
The WS-Notification specification and the WS-Resource Framework will
provide
a
scalable pub/sub messaging model and the ability to model stateful resources
using Web services. Stateful resources are elements that can be modeled
including physical entities (such as servers) to logical constructs (such as
business agreements and contracts). Access to these stateful resources enables
customers to realize business efficiencies including just in time procurement
with multiple suppliers, systems outage detection and recovery and Grid-based
workload balancing.
WS-Notification can automatically trigger an action in the IT
infrastructure
once certain criteria have been met. This can include suppliers automatically
being notified to bid to replenish inventory once current inventory drops to a
set level. Several suppliers can be notified of this depletion in inventory
and WS-Notification can be set up so that only the supplier with the best bid
fills the order. The authors of WS-Notification include Akamai, The Globus
Alliance, HP, IBM, SAP, Sonic Software and TIBCO.
"To date, Web Services standards have primarily addressed companies'
requirements around definition and management of services. WS-Notification
proposes to also specify an agreed upon definition for events," said Derek
Collison, vice president of Products and Technologies for TIBCO Software.
"Events are what bring a service-oriented architecture to life and a
standardized definition for events will accelerate delivery of real-time
business to more companies at lower cost."
The WS-Resource Framework includes:
- Modeling Stateful Resources with Web services. A white paper describing
how
to utilize the related specifications to model the resources in the context of
Web services.
- WS-Resource Properties defines how data associated with a stateful
resource
can be queried and changed using Web services technologies. This allows
clients to build applications to efficiently read and update data associated
with resources, such as contracts, servers or purchase orders.
- WS-Resource Lifetime, which allows the user to specify the period
during
which a resource definition is valid. For example, WS Resource Lifetime can
automatically update suppliers from all systems once contracts or service
level agreements expire, or deleting products from inventory systems that are
no longer being manufactured.
The authors of the new framework include, The Globus Alliance, HP and
IBM.
"Sonic Software is pleased to be part of the effort to standardize these
critical elements of enterprise infrastructure," said Gordon Van Huizen, CTO
for Sonic Software. "Scalable, distributed messaging has always been at the
heart of an enterprise service bus (ESB), allowing resilient, flexible
connectivity and interaction between applications, data sources and business
partners. WS-Notification and the WS-Resource Framework promise to speed the
adoption of ESBs by offering rich interoperability across enterprise
middleware, while supporting a unified, service-oriented fabric for
application integration, data access and resource management."
"The Globus Alliance is enthusiastic about this latest step in harmonizing
Grid services and Web services," said Ian Foster, Argonne National Laboratory
associate division director for Mathematics and Computer Science and
University of Chicago professor of computer science. "WS-Resource Framework
will add clear value for users of the Globus Toolkit and will hasten
acceptance of the open standards that are key to the Grid's broad adoption for
e-Science and e-Business."
"Akamai is excited to collaborate with these new specifications that
significantly advance the Open Services Grid Architecture," said Chris
Schoettle, executive vice president of Technology, Networks & Support at
Akamai. "This effort addresses the growing need for on demand applications
that are the underpinning of a resilient, scalable and efficient e-business
infrastructure. Akamai's globally distributed computing platform is enabling
enterprises to realize new business efficiencies through Web Services and the
OSGA."
This family of new specifications provides a foundation for the Open Grid
Services Architecture. Using WS-Resource Framework and WS-Notification, Grid
infrastructures and applications can now be built using Web services
specifications. This will facilitate customers' ability to access and share
computing resources on demand over the Internet, relying on an infrastructure
that is resilient, self-managing and always available. Customers can integrate
applications and share data and processing power with huge potential cost and
efficiency savings.
These specifications provide customers with the ability to share
infrastructure across emerging business applications, systems management and
Grid computing.
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