I've read with great interest the recent GRIDtoday articles concerning the relative size and success of European vs. North American Grid efforts. I'd like to follow up with four comments of my own:

1. The articles talk mostly about Europe and North America, and thus do a disservice to the major, and successful, Grid efforts in other continents and countries. For example, there are substantial efforts underway in Australia, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Thailand, to list just six countries on the Pacific Rim. There are also numerous active practitioners and researchers in South America.

2. One lesson that I took away from these articles is that we need to do better at communicating our successes. For example, I sense that many are unaware of the strength and vitality of the North American Grid community. Projects like TeraGrid, Open Science Grid, WestGrid (in Canada), Earth System Grid and Fusion Grid are all providing production services to substantial communities. To give one example, Earth System Grid supports more than 2,000 climate researchers worldwide. Projects like GEON (geosciences), LEAD (environmental sciences), NEES (earthquake engineering) and caBIG (cancer bioinformatics) are transforming how their communities practice science. For example, caBIG is deploying Grid technology at every NIH Cancer Center. I could list dozens of other examples. In addition, many regional and campus grids are supporting local communities.

3. Friendly competition is good if it spurs greater efforts. However, we all suffer if competition impedes exchange and cooperation. As chair of the Globus Management Committee, which helps coordinate the work of the international Globus community, I know that it is possible to build and deploy high-quality software that includes components from many countries, and that international cooperation can be both productive and fun. But I also hear from Globus users who complain, "Our funding agencies tell us we have to use national software X, not Globus!" I suspect that many of us encounter such views on occasion, and we should all work to counter them, as they are ultimately counterproductive.

4. I strongly second Greg Nawrocki's emphasis on the importance of applications. I remember visiting NASA Ames in January 1999, in the early days of the Information Power Grid (IPG) project. We spent a fascinating week interviewing scientists, and in a 40-page report identified opportunities for the application of Grid technlogy within half a dozen different projects. As Raymond Turney points in his recent article, IPG was arguably ahead of its time. However, I also think that it suffered from a "build it and they will come" philosophy. I still wonder what would have happened if they had focused instead on the opportunities within the Virtual Wind Tunnel or other wonderful NASA projects. Without application successes, work on technology (however innovative and/or well done) is for naught.