The Evolution of Grids
Grids are currently focused on resource access and management
- This is a necessary first step to provide a uniform underpinning, but is not sufficient if we want to realize the potential of Grids for facilitating science and engineering
- Unless an application already has a framework that hides the use of these low level services the Grid is difficult for most users
Grids are evolving to a service oriented architecture
- Users are primarily interested in “services” – something that performs a useful function, such as a particular type of simulation, or a broker that finds the “best” system to run a job
- Even many Grid tool developers, such as those that develop application portals, are primarily interested in services – resource discovery, event management, user security credential management, etc.
This evolution is going hand-in-hand with a large IT industry push to develop an integrated framework for Web services
This is also what is necessary to address some of the current user complaints