It appears the stars were aligned perfectly this week, as this issue is full (even more so than usual) with great articles and interesting, informative announcements.

To start, we have yet another thoughtful piece from Intel's Tom Gibbs, who is fast becoming GRIDtoday's most prolific contributor. In his article, "Grids for Kids: Building the Foundation for Innovation," he takes a look at the state of the world economy -- present and future -- and discusses the effects of getting today's students familiar with new technologies, such as Grid 2.0 -- which many already are unknowingly using on sites mike MySpace.com. Gibbs argues that innovation is the key to advancing the global economy and quality of living, and the key to ensuring innovation occurs is understanding technology. However, as Gibbs points out, the global statistics in regard to students and access to basic technologies, such as PCs or the Internet, are not too promising, but hopefully that will change as organizations worldwide start to understand the importance of technology education.

I've actually thought about this topic on numerous occasions, and I'm really glad that Tom wrote this article. Speaking specifically of Grid computing, educating students on the technology will not only lead to it being used for more work in the name of societal progress, but education will also ensure that the technology itself is allowed to evolve and reach its maximum potential. Although some of our best and brightest computer science students are attending Grid schools and workshops all over the world, I think Tom is right-on in his view that the real key is getting the general K-12 population familiar with the technology behind their favorite Web 2.0 sites. I've heard it bemoaned by several individuals that there aren't enough Grid-savvy students entering the workforce right now. Hopefully this will change, and we all can benefit as a result.

Another article on which I'd like to comment specifically is the Q&A I conducted with Shankar Iyer of GemStone Systems. We've covered Appistry and its "application fabric" recently, and here GemStone's Iyer lays out the case for the "data fabric." Not only does he discuss the technology behind an EDF, but he also hits upon which markets, and which divisions within these markets, could see results from adopting data fabric solutions. For example, Iyer notes that while financial services is driving short-term demand, the company is starting to see demand from customers (across various markets) who are doing real-time operational intelligence, as well as from companies looking to apply the technology to "edge of the enterprise" areas like supply chains and logistics. Overall, Iyer does a great job of explaining what an enterprise data fabric is, and how it is best utilized.

Finally, although there are several announcements detailing some interesting applications of Grid technologies (e.g., the United Kingdom's Food Service Agency turning to utility computing, or SDSC providing cyberinfrastructure technology to help battle wildfires), two articles to which I want to make sure I draw your attention are "Boeing Expands GRiD to European Research & Technology Team" and "The Grid Research to Enterprise Funnel." The latter, which comes from this month's Globus Consortium Journal, is a Q&A with Ian Foster about his new role as director of the Computation Institute. As always, whenever Ian talks about Grid, or about technology in general, it's worth listening -- so make sure to check out the piece. As for the Boeing announcement, I feel it's important to highlight occasions where major companies not only deploy Grid/distributed computing technologies in an effort to connect divisions spread across the globe, but actually feel strong enough about it to go public. If you're interested in how the world's largest companies are using the technologies we cover, this is certainly an article you don't want to miss.