Top Six in Grid 2006

[ ] M540387 ) Grid's Top Six in 2006
By Greg Nawrocki, Contributing Author

Globus Consortium president Greg Nawrocki takes a look at the "Top Six
Grid Areas to Watch in 2006" and the "Six Interesting Vendors to Watch
in Enterprise Grid in 2006." Among the areas covered are "Securing the
Grid" and "The Linux/Grid Relationship"; vendors discussed include
Platform, EMC and Microsoft.

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**TOP 6 GRID AREAS TO WATCH IN 2006**

Data Virtualization and Grid Computing Directions

One of the primary strengths of e-Science Grids has historically been
their ability to transfer large data sets for collaborative computing
scenarios. And enterprise today is similarly moving beyond the
traditional "compute grids" and starting to explore interests in the
potential of "data grids" for data-intensive scenarios such as
business intelligence and handling the movement and management of
transactional data. While experts such as Carl Kesselman warn us not
to over-taxonomize or create a false sense of mutual exclusivity
between data and compute grids (after all, he says, "you can't do much
computing without data, and you generally don't have much data without
doing compute"), the confluence of data virtualization and Grid
computing trends in enterprise should be interesting to watch in '06.

Securing the Grid

With the release of Globus Toolkit 4.0 -- the convergence between Grid
services and Web services took another giant step forward. But Grid
services do have a number of security challenges that are sometimes
greater (and sometimes different) than security challenges for Web
services. As users cross virtual organizations, grids need mechanisms
to accommodate all of the different security models and frameworks.
The WS standards work is certainly a key to getting over the
interoperability hump between different security standards, but grids
also require very fine-grained ways to express delegations of rights
(who gets access to which data and compute resources), standard ways
for Grid services to navigate firewalls, and more "enterprise-ready"
mechanisms for paper trails and auditing. Security will continue to be
a very busy focus area for Grid developers in '06.

Network Intelligence Increasing the Grid's IQ

Networking is not just about "pipes" and "plumbing" anymore, it's much
smarter than that. There are a number of networking heavies that are
introducing new virtualized network control and access to the Grid --
from time-of-day reservation scheduling capabilities, to
"application-aware" monitoring, to smarter networking devices that can
more effectively route Grid traffic. As Bob Aiken from Cisco said in
'05, what we're seeing on the networking side in grids today is "a
blurring of the boundaries between operating systems, networks and
middleware." In 2006, Grid pros will start thinking of the network
more like neurons in a biological sense and less like pipes in a
plumbing sense.

The Linux/Grid Relationship

Today's largest IT shops, including powerhouses like Google, Yahoo and
Amazon, are running "scale-out" Linux environments. While the key to
Grids is enabling heterogeneity and making it so that it "doesn't
matter what your OS is," the openness, low cost and flexibility of
Linux has made it the preferred OS for Grid computing. Over the last
couple of years, Linux virtualization has seen a huge boost in support
from the major distributions -- which catapulted virtualization into
mainstream enterprise. What will the Linux Grid computing efforts look
like in 2006, and will they rally behind de facto middleware like the
Globus Toolkit for Grid the same way that they rallied behind Xen for
server virtualization?

Grid Licensing Issues

In 2005, William Fellows from The 451 Group made a compelling case
(link to abstract of report) that enterprise applications' traditional
licensing schemes are fundamentally at odds with how applications are
consumed in Grid environments. Reminiscent of the SCO licensing fears
in the history of Linux adoption, some enterprises question whether
Grid application licensing issues have been sufficiently addressed.
Perhaps 2006 will be the year that an SAP or other large application
vendor takes a definitive stand on what licensing will/should look
like in enterprise Grid computing environments.

Virtual Workspaces

To understand the importance of virtual workspaces in the Grid, it
helps to paraphrase one of the leading researchers on the subject,
Kate Keahey of Argonne National Laboratory
(, who
says, "A virtual workspace is an abstraction of an execution
environment that can be made dynamically available in the Grid. One
requirement of a virtual workspace is the ability to associate an
activity in the grid with a certain quanta of resource such as a
certain percentage of CPU, memory or disk. The other requirement is
recreating the necessary environment (in terms of software
configuration) that the user needs on the grid. Most applications
require a very specific configuration and how it's provided for on a
remote resource in the grid reliably and dynamically is a major
hurdle." In a sense, virtual workspaces take one of the most complex
variables out of the Grid equation, application deployment. Virtual
workspaces will be a key driver in the coming year of Grid adoption.

**SIX INTERESTING ENTERPRISE GRID VENDORS TO WATCH IN 2006**

Platform Computing

Platform wrapped up '05 with the release of the Enterprise Grid
Orchestrator -- a new product for the integration and management of
heterogeneous resources in a Grid environment. 2006 should be a very
interesting year for the Toronto-based company, which partnered with
Microsoft for LSF to offer some key functionality in the Windows
Compute Cluster Server release next year. Songnian Zhou, CEO of
Platform, has pointed out that "The killer app for Grid is not the
components of applications -- ERP, CRM -- but the connection of all of
these components of enterprise applications to form business
processes." Platform is looking beyond the traditional Grid
application set. However, instead of simply looking down another alley
they are thinking in terms of application aggregation, the
commonalities that exist between different application sets and where
this all comes together. This type of thinking is going to be critical
in the coming year.

Univa Corp.

Univa is a rather obvious addition to the 2006 watch list. With the
recent beta announcement of Univa Globus Enterprise (PDF), the company
is officially opening the doors for business and is the first Grid
start-up assuming the services/support/distribution model role for the
open source Globus Toolkit (similar to Red Hat's role supporting
Linux). Not only will Univa satisfy the proverbial "throat to choke"
requirement for enterprise Grid end- users, they also are developing
their own GT features and extensions that will make the Globus Toolkit
truly "enterprise ready." There is also the fact that the founders of
Univa are the definitive pioneers/inventors of the Globus Toolkit.
Steve Tuecke, Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman were also key players in
laying the groundwork for the standards on which most grids are built
-- and bar none, no one "gets" open source Grids (and enterprise
requirements thereof) to the extent that these guys do.

EMC Corp.

Last week's acquisition of Acxiom's Grid software by EMC was perhaps a
harbinger of other big EMC Grid announcements to come in '06. As Grid
technology evolves, the industry is moving away from mere compute
Grids, and toward data Grids -- where data virtualization and storage
challenges could escalate EMC to one of the key outspoken players for
the industry. Pushing on Grid directions is also a way for EMC to stay
competitive with IBM. The rivalry between the two was well-documented
in '05. Network-Attached Storage was one of the key areas in which
these two vendors battled, and for the Grid community, the issue of
coordinated data sharing (including navigating firewalls and pulling
data out of storage devices at the edge) is another frontier area for
the industry that will see a lot of activity in 2006. EMC has had some
interesting personnel additions over the last couple of years that
make it clear they're serious about Grid. Ian Baird (from Platform) is
the company's CTO for Grid and Utility Computing Solutions. Jeff Nick
(former On-Demand heavy hitter from IBM) is the company's CTO. EMC
isn't a company that's just fashionably turning up the dial on Grid
for PR purposes -- they're in it for the long haul. The company's
ownership of VMware -- and the Grid/Virtualization relationship -- is
another reason why EMC will be interesting to keep an eye on in 2006.

Cisco Systems

Cisco truly does put the "intelligence in the network," and the
convergence of virtualization, loosely-coupled services, systems
management and dynamic provisioning capabilities is changing the role
of the network from the mere transport of IP packets to central
nervous system for the IT infrastructure. It would appear that Cisco's
"Intelligence in the Network" mantra will continue to manifest itself
in Grid discussions -- as virtualization concerns continue to move
further down the stack. In '05, we saw Cisco snap up Infiniband
datacenter interconnect TopSpin for $250 million, and with Cisco's
"Application-Oriented Networking" product line and an active "Server
Networking and Virtualization" group, I predict we will see "Grid" and
"Cisco" mentioned in the same sentence with greater frequency in 2006.

Network Appliance

I'm really intrigued to watch the evolution of NetApp's Data OnTap GX
-- the operating system that's driving their virtualization product
evolution. OK, I may have fallen for their marketing hype, hook, line
and sinker, but the fact that these guys are drilling down to the OS
level tells me that they are venturing into uncharted waters with
respect to the complexities of what providing virtualized data really
means. It's more than an application and more than middleware -- it's
a new way of thinking about process control, device management, file
management and networking, all those elements that we learn about in
the first few chapters of any book on operating system concepts.
Another key concept is information management, how files and other
system resources are accessed and controlled. NetApp has mentioned
that another key component of the slimmed down first release of Data
OnTap GX is its unified namespace capability. Clearly, they see that
multiple ways to access the same data and aggregations of data
presented in a unified manner are the keys to virtualization. It's
going to be interesting to see how this is done and if they are
conforming to standards where the rubber meets the road. If the OnTap
GX operating system is effective and becomes a commonly accepted
method of data virtualization, it could prove revolutionary to
enterprise Grid adoption. So, keep an eye on NetApp in '06.

Microsoft Corp.

Bill Gates' keynote at Supercomputing 2005 in Seattle was, at its
root, a "here we are" announcement. Although largely compute
Grid-focused, Gates' talk also highlighted a vision for scientific
workflow and was quick to point out that Microsoft was a driving force
behind XML and Web Services standards. But the importance of Microsoft
is even simpler than that. Microsoft applications such as Excel are
simply accepted standard applications and user interfaces for
computing. A Grid-driven version of Microsoft Excel would indeed be a
killer app. There have long since been many smaller players actively
providing Grid and Grid-like products for Windows operating systems.
It is not hard for one to imagine Microsoft leveraging these companies
in any way its massive bankroll desires. Tony Hey and Fabrizio
Gagliardi joined Microsoft last year. Both are internationally
recognized leaders in Grid computing. Does Microsoft "get" Grid
computing beyond compute grids and cycle scavenging? Will Microsoft
support and embrace the standards that have been so important to the
evolution of Grid computing thus far, or will they simply redefine
Grid as they see fit? Microsoft obviously has something brewing in the
area of Grid computing, and they have a history of proving they can't
be ignored. We'll see if '06 is the year that they open the kimono on
their Grid efforts a little more.