In speaking with ASPEED's Kurt Ziegler last week, two commonly held beliefs were reaffirmed for me: (1) the financial services industry is the preeminent user of enterprise Grid technologies and (2) European grid users are, on average, more advanced than their North American counterparts.

When it comes to answering why this is the case, the first part is relatively easy to figure out: The financial services market is very competitive, and any technology -- including Grid computing -- that will give a company an edge is likely to be taken advantage of very quickly.

The second "truth," however, was a little more difficult to wrap my head around. While better minds than mine have gone about trying to figure this out, I still thought I'd give it a shot. The best I could come up with is that the community spirit that seems to prevail in Europe makes adopting a technology like the Grid, where sharing is the name of the game, that much easier. Really, the fact that I am referring to "Europe," and not any of its individual countries, speaks volumes. But, with the European Union, the Euro and relatively free travel among countries, it's almost easier to think of the continent as a whole versus a collection of countries. And when you look at the various Grid and networking projects stretching across international boundaries (e.g., EGEE, GEANT2, DEISA, etc.), this is certainly true from an HPC perspective. On the other hand, I made a reference earlier to Europe's "North American counterparts," which is a little misleading.

I'm not going to judge whether it's right or wrong, but it is my experience that very few American citizens view their country as part of North America and, although I can't speak from personal experience, the same probably holds true for the continent's other countries, as well. We tend to view the region as the United States, Canada and Mexico (quite honestly, I think many people forget altogether the countries that make up Central America), and there really isn't a whole lot of community going on. And, maybe I'm way off base here, but I believe American companies tend to take this view too, even within their own walls. Should it be surprising, then, that companies are leery to adopt technologies like Grid computing, even though they have valuable resources just wasting away in departmental silos? That said, we're coming around. Every week in GRIDtoday you can read about a handful of companies making the switch to Grid and service-oriented infrastructures, and government- funded Grid projects, especially in the United States and Canada, continue to add new nodes. Now, if we can just get to connecting those national grids to one another ...

As for the rest of this week's issue, you simply cannot avoid finding an interesting announcement wherever you look. And, keeping with the geographic theme with which I seem to be going, there is news from around the globe, with the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia all represented. Also, be sure to read Daniel Pasco's piece on security in a desktop or volunteer grid situation. A former network administrator, Pasco takes a ground -level look at the issues present and what can be done to address them.