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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Special Features:
THIS WEEK'S BRIEF ANALYSES OF
RECENT GRIDtoday NEWS ITEMS
By Rolf McClellan
Following are brief evaluations of recent news stories from GRIDtoday. Rolf
McClellan has nearly 20 years of experience in the network and computer
industry. www.mcclellanconsulting.com
New Vendors Eyeing Cisco's Margin-Rich Router Business (02/27/04)
According to this market research, the worldwide enterprise router market
was
worth $4.3 billion in 2003, with the secure router (VPN router) segment being
one of the few areas of revenue growth expected between 2003 and 2007.
Comment: This report is relevant primarily to the vendors of enterprise and
SOHO router products.
$2 Million NSF Grant Funds Grid Security Research (02/27/04)
The National Science Foundation has given USC and its collaborators a $2
million grant to develop a new self-configuring security and privacy framework
to protect Grid applications from intrusion and other network attacks. In
addition to providing fine-grained access control for Grid resources, the
GridSec project and will use distributed firewall software to recognize threat
patterns as they emerge and distributed intrusion-repelling software to
dynamically reconfigure the Grid to foil the attack.
Analysis: Security is obviously one of the major problems facing Grid
computing over the Internet. However, it appears unlikely that a $2 million
grant will be sufficient to develop an adequate set of solutions.
Acxiom Pioneers Grid-Based Computing For BI (02/27/04)
Acxiom is touting the benefits of its Customer Information Infrastructure
(CII), which is software for data management, data mining and Business
Intelligence. CII reportedly uses Grid technology to allow the federation of
customer data across multiple sources and databases.
Comment: Is the data Grid capability based on software from the Globus Tool
Kit or software from some other source, such as Avaki?
IBM Japan To Distribute ClearCube Solution In Japan (02/26/04)
ClearCube Technology announced an agreement with IBM Japan to distribute
the
ClearCube solution in Japan. ClearCube replaces desktop computers with PC
Blades in the data center. The blade PC then drives desktop monitors and other
user peripherals via a KVM cube device that provides the necessary PC I/O
ports at the desktop.
Analysis: ClearCube offers the ultimate "thin client" solution by
centralizing
almost all management and physical security issues in the data center where
the PC blade server resides. This model can also be applied to a utility
computing environment where PC blades are assigned to the desktop in a dynamic
fashion based on the application suite desired.
REAL Software Enters Linux Development Tools Market (02/26/04)
REAL Software Inc announced REALbasic 5.5, the latest release of its
software
for Linux desktop and server applications. REALbasic includes a conversion
utility that allows existing applications written in Visual Basic to be
readily migrated to Linux. With version 5.5, REALbasic adds support for SOAP
and XML.
Analysis: This is another tool aimed at placing Linux on a more equal
footing
with Windows as a desktop operating system.
Microsoft ASP.NET Gains Momentum W/ Web Development Community (02/25/04)
Microsoft Corp announced enhancements to its Microsoft ASP.NET Resource Kit
for building Web applications, plus some customer success stories.
Analysis: ASP.NET facilitates building Web applications that access or
publish
Web services without detailed knowledge of XML, or SOAP.
Rapid Prototypes Chooses Gateway Grid For High-Speed SIMS (02/25/04)
Rapid Prototypes is using the Grid computing service from Gateway Inc and
United Devices to run Electronic Design Automation (EDA) applications for FGPA
ICs. The Gateway Processing on Demand (GPOD) service is based on United
Device's Grid MP Alliance platform running on nearly 7,000 computers in
Gateway retail stores in the U.S. GPOD has a theoretical peak capacity of 11
TFLOPS. The United Devices' Grid MP platform has previously been used in
large-scale drug screening projects as the Anthrax Research Project, the
Cancer Research Project and the Smallpox Research Grid Project.
Analysis: On-Demand computational Grid services such as GPOD can help
smaller
organizations compete against larger companies with access to computing
clusters, supercomputers or large populations of networked desktop computers.
Entrust Solution Delivers Seamless Strong Authentication (02/24/04)
Via integration with Sun Microsystem's Identity Manager and applications
from
Citrix Systems, Oracle and SAP, the Entrust TruePass Secure Identity
Management Solution provides end users with Web-based strong authentication.
TruePass has been used by the High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory
(HPCVL) to integrate strong authentication into its Secure Grid Portal.
Analysis: Identity Management will be an key enabler of secure Grid
computing
over the Internet.
IBM Adds More Muscle To World's Most Powerful UNIX Server (02/24/04)
IBM announced enhancements for its UNIX server, the 64-bit eServer p690,
increasing memory, improving performance and lowering costs on many
configurations. Recently, in a TPC-C benchmark test, a 32-way p690 processed
1,025,486 transactions per minute with a price/performance metric of
$5.43/tpmC. The p690 can run the AIX 5L and Linux operating systems
simultaneously on a single server, with logical partitioning allowing system
resources to be allocated dynamically to support Capacity on Demand
technologies.
Commnet: The eServer p690 is a densely packaged SMP server for on-demand
server computing or inclusion in computational clusters or Grids.
Harvard Pilgrim, Perot Develop Open Architecture Solution (02/24/04)
Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Inc and Perot Systems Corp have developed an
open
architecture Web services solution that enables health care providers to
effectively exchange secure HIPAA-compliant transactions (e.g., claims,
eligibility, etc.) with Harvard Pilgrim.
Analysis: This is a good example of Web services being used for extranet
application integration and EDI-style transactions, neither of which are very
relevant to Grid computing.
VMware Announces New Release Virtual Infrastructure Software (02/23/04)
VMware Inc.announced GSX Server 3, the latest release of its virtual
infrastructure software for Intel based systems. VMware GSX Server simplifies
computing infrastructure by partitioning and isolating logical servers in
secure and transportable virtual machines, each of which can run standard
Windows or Linux operating systems and applications.
Analysis: Virtual machines that can be provisioned on demand can help
deliver
many of the benefits of utility computing, including reducing the number of
physical servers that must be configured and managed.
Sun, Open Cloud Announce Final Release Of JSR 22 (02/23/04)
Sun Microsystems Inc and Open Cloud announced the Final Release of the JAIN
SLEE specification (JSR 22). JAIN SLEE provides a standard allowing Java
developers to build and deploy services via the Service Logic Execution
Environment for new real-time systems such as voice/data networks or
industrial automation.
Analysis: Java APIs for Integrated Networks (JAIN) are intended for service
providers building real time applications for integrated TDM and IP networks,
such as services spanning the PSTN and VoIP networks.
SuperMicro Releases High Performing 4U Rackmount Server (02/23/04)
SuperMicro Inc. announced the SuperServer 7043M-8. The system's
newly-designed
chassis with the flexibility to be installed as a 4U rackmount or as a tower.
The 4U configuration offers dual Intel Xeon Processors, three PCI-X expansion
slots, single channel Ultra320 SCSI, 1 Gigabit and 10/100M Ethernet ports.
Analysis: This server package is evidently optimized for high performance
individual servers such as for Web hosting and e-mail server applications
rather than high density cluster computing.
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