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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Special Features:

BUYYA'S GRID CORNER
By Rajkumar Buyya, Contributing Editor

Dear all in the Grid community,

I hope that all of you have enjoyed your new year holidays and getting back to your work on research, development, and/or support of Grid computing technologies and its applications.

Let me begin my first informal column by wishing you all a happy, prosperous and successful new year.

Now, for my insights into what is going on in Grid:

  1. Efforts in Grid Computing, both in academia and industry, continue to grow rapidly worldwide. For example, during my visit to India from Dec. 10-Jan. 5, I have came across several new developments. Indian companies such as Infosys (www.infosys.com) and Satyam (www.satyam.com) have started Grid projects and actively engaged in the development of Grid technologies or their utilization in driving scientific and business applications.
  2. Infosys has developed Grid-based data center management tools, whereas Satyam has developed Bioinformatics applications. I heard that Satyam has applied desktop Grids to bio applications in pharmaceutical/drug discovery applications. In fact, I have seen a demonstration of a micro-array processing (which helps in early detection of breast cancer) application on a desktop Grid constructed using our Alchemi (www.alchemi.net) Framework. Many other multi-national companies in India have started active programs in Grid computing. For example, both HP and Oracle have been developing some key Grid technologies needed for taking their current products to the next level. In addition, Oracle, Dell, Intel, EMC have announced their joint project, called MegaGrid. All these developments sounds exciting and the future for Grids seem brighter!
  3. The Grid Infoware has been updated to include pointers to some recent developments. For example, a link to CoreGrid Network of Excellence funded by European Union is provided. Here in Australia, the government has initiated a Grid applications-oriented effort, called eResearch, www.arc.gov.au/grant_programs/special_initiatives.htm, which is basically the Australian version of the United Kingdom's eScience program. The government has allocated some millions of dollars for this special research initiative.

    4. Back in India, Govt. of India (Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies) had funded C-DAC (a project) to develop National Grid Infrastructure that connects severals PARAM supercomputers deployed in several primer institutes and universities.

  4. During my trip to India, I had an opportunity to visit Anna University's Madras Institute of Technologies (MIT), who partnered with C-DAC in developing Grid technologies and applications. They are also making Grids interfaces available in Indian languages. One of their effort was the development of Tamil (a language spoken in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu) interface for our Grid Market Directory (GMD) user-interface. They also developed a Linux shell UI in Tamil. You can enjoy the appearance of GMD in Tamil language by growing some of its snapshots in Tamil: www.gridbus.org/gmd/tamil/.

    5. This is probably the world's first Grid technology with non-English language interface -- thanks to MIT@Anna in India. Such efforts are important for taking "Grids to common man!" This reminds me of an article that appeared in "The Hindu Business Line" newspaper, titled "Grid computing offers much for common man." The article is available at www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/01/04/stories/2005010402030500.htm.

  5. I would like to share pointers to recent technical reports released by the Gridbus Project. They include:
    • An Economy-based algorithm for scheduling data-intensive applications on global Grids.
    • Grid Federation: An economy-based distributed resource management system for large-scale resource coupling.
    • A taxonomy of market-based resource management systems for utility-driven cluster computing.
    • Constructing A Grid Simulation with Differentiated Network Service Using GridSim Reports can be downloaded from www.gridbus.org/tech_reports.html.
  6. Last, but not least, I would like to share pointers to recent honors or masters minor theses submitted by two of my students:
    • Decentralized Media Streaming Infrastructure (DeMSI): A Peer-to-Peer Content Delivery Network (Master of IT -- Minor Thesis).
    • Economy-Based Data Replication Broker Policies in Data Grids (BSc Honours Thesis).

    Thesis can also be downloaded from: www.gridbus.org/tech_reports.html.

That is all for now.

Thanks for your attention and wish you all a happy, prosperous, and successful days for the rest of this year.
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