What Are Computing and Data Grids?
Grids are technology and an emerging architecture that involves several types of middleware that mediate between science portals, applications, and the underlying resources (compute resource, data resource, and instrument)
Grids are persistent environments that facilitate integrating software applications with instruments, displays, computational, and information resources that are managed by diverse organizations in widespread locations
Grids are tools for data intensive science that facilitate remote access to large amounts of data that is managed in remote storage resources and analyzed by remote compute resources, all of which are integrated into the scientist’s software environment.
Grids are persistent environments and tools to facilitate large-scale collaboration among global collaborators.
Grids are also a major international technology initiative with 450 people from 35 countries in an IETF-like standards organization: The Global Grid Forum (GGF)
Bill Johnston, DOE Science Grid