 |
|
DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
|
Special Features:
THIS WEEK'S BRIEF ANALYSES OF
RECENT GRIDtoday NEWS ITEMS
By Rolf McClellan And Jim Metzler
Following are brief evaluations of recent news stories from GRIDtoday by
two
noted IT analysts.
Rolf McClellan has nearly 20 years of experience in the network and
computer
industry. The central thrust of his work has been in analyzing the impact of
emerging technologies on the evolution of enterprise and service provider
network environments: www.mcclellanconsulting.com/
Jim Metzler is a principal in Ashton, Metzler & Associates, a company that
focuses on leveraging technology for business success. In his career, Metzler
has worked in virtually every segment of IT: www.ashtonmetzler.com/
Ottawa Firm Offers Utility Model To Semiconductor Firms (01/16/04)
GridWay Computing Corp is offering Grid computing services in Ottawa, Toronto,
Montreal, Quebec City, Kingston and Cornwall, Canada to semiconductor
companies that have access Telecom Ottawa's Metro Ethernet network. GridWay
computational utility services are based on a cluster of 40 Sun Fire V60x
servers running Red Hat Linux. The service is positioned as an complementary
to in-house computing resources for acceleration of compute-intensive chip
simulations or verifications.
Analysis: GridWay is significant as one of the first intersections of
tightly-coupled Grid computing and Metro Ethernet services. As Metro Ethernet
and standards-based Grid computing become more universal, it will become much
easier to exploit the synergy between these technologies. By outsourcing Grid
computing smaller organizations can gain access to the same large scale
computing resources owned by much larger competitors.
Novell Gives Enterprises Power To Manage User Identities (01/16/04)
Novell has released Nsure Identity Manager 2, a renamed follow-on product for
Novell DirXML which uses a metadirectory approach to managing user identity
attributes such as name, e-mail address or password.
Analysis: While this announcement relates to user ID management in a general
IT environment, a standards-based version of the concept does have potential
application to Grid computing.
Critical Software Announces WMPI II Linux (01/16/04)
Critical Software Inc announced that its implementation of the MPI-2
middleware standard, WMPI II, now provides support for a wide range of Linux
platforms in addition to Windows. WMPI II now supports Linux versions from Red
Hat, SuSE, Mandrake, Turbolinux, Debian, Slackware and Gentoo, as well
providing interoperability between Linux and Windows nodes.
Analysis: Linux support should greatly broaden the market for this product in
HPC.
Newest Version Of Windows Services For UNIX Available, Free (01/15/04)
Microsoft Corp has released the latest version of its free UNIX
interoperability product, Windows Services for UNIX Version 3.5 (SFU 3.5). SFU
3.5 offers enhanced performance of cross-platform tools and services, better
UNIX command-line administration capabilities, and the ability to incorporate
UNIX-based applications (running on Interix over Windows) in a Microsoft .NET
Web Services environment.
Analysis: This announcement is mostly about Windowscentric integration of
heterogeneous Windows/UNIX server environments and Microsoft's desire to see
applications migrate from UNIX to Windows servers. Web Services, which
constitute Microsoft's current development focus relative to Grid computing,
can serve as a means for integrating and exchanging application data to form a
Data Grid.
TenFold Announces Web Services Strategy (01/15/04)
TenFold Corp has announced its strategy for supporting Web Services with its
EnterpriseTenFold platform for enterprise applications. The initiative will
allow TenFold-based applications to offer Web Services to other applications,
and to access and integrate Web Services made available by other applications.
Analysis: As noted above, Web Services can for the basis for integration of
disparate resources to form a Data Grid or a computational Grid. However, this
announcement is more about intra-enterprise and B2B application integration.
GlobusWORLD Features Grid Computing For E-Science, E-Business (01/14/04)
GlobusWORLD 2004, to be held Jan. 20-23 in San Francisco, will focus on both
E-Science and E-Business applications of Grid technology based on the Globus
Toolkit(GT), the de facto standard middleware of the Grid.
Analysis: This conference provides an opportunity for interaction among
leading Grid technology developers, Grid users from the scientific and
business communities, and those weighing the benefits of deploying Girds in
their organizations.
Ellison Steps Down As Oracle Chairman (01/13/04)
Jeffrey Henley, Oracle's chief financial officer, will replace Larry Ellison
as Oracle's Chairman of the Board. Ellison, who co-founded the company in
1977, will remain as CEO.
Analysis: Ellison will undoubtedly continue to shape Oracle's business
strategy around Grid technology.
Net Fusion To Aid In Development Of Political Intel App (01/13/04)
Net Fusion Corp, a provider technologies and services for accelerating the
development of Microsoft .NET applications, has announced a customer win at
Dynamic Campaign Holdings, a provider of an application for managing political
campaigns.
Analysis: As this announcement shows, not every Web Service or .NET
application is very relevant to the Grid. Unless, in this case, one of the
political candidates will claim to have invented the Grid.
FreeBSD Project Announces FreeBSD 5.2 (01/13/04)
The FreeBSD Project has announced the availability of FreeBSD 5.2, the latest
version of the project's operating system.
Analysis: With continuing improvements FreeBSD could become more attractive as
an alternative to Linux for an open source operating system for cluster
computing based on Intel architecture microprocessors.
|