Networking Vendors as Grid Innovators

Welcome to the June issue of the Globus Consortium Journal. Those of you who have followed my Grid Meter blog on InfoWorld know that I have jumped on every opportunity to comment whenever a networking vendor does anything remotely Grid or virtualization-related. Ever since Bob Aiken from Cisco astutely pointed out that we were going to see a blurring of the boundaries between operating systems, network and middleware, I've been very curious to observe how the networking vendors seem to be dabbling in what's traditionally known as "systems management."

In the enterprise's early Grid discussions, most of the attention has been focused on the systems management implications of Grid -- how it will affect provisioning, job scheduling, etc. But clearly, the networking side of the discussion is going to be very interesting to keep an eye on. How will networking policy, switching and routing directions drive Grid's evolution? How will fire-walling and security issues be accommodated? Can the public Internet adequately carry Grid traffic, will organizations need to build dedicated networks for IntraGrids, or will "smart networking" devices be created to more effectively route Grid traffic? To what extent are today's bandwidth, latency and I/O constraints being addressed for Grid environments? There are numerous, network-specific Grid efforts that have been taking place for years -- but these topics are still only creeping into the media dialogue.

One of the network / Grid leaders that's really been at the forefront of these discussions - Franco Travostino from Nortel - joins us this month with some news about some very cool "virtual mash-ups" that he's working on, as well as a sneak peek at his upcoming "Grid Networks" book (with contributed articles from more than 30 networking industry pros). We've got two very smart Grid pros from Univa - Richard Wellner and Scott Koranda - giving their take on the network-specific requirements for Grid. And the always insightful Andreas Antonopoulos from Nemertes Research also joins us to explain why networking pros at the recent Interop event were so excited to discuss Grid in the Data Center Summit that Antonopoulos and his colleagues organized recently.

The Grid networking discussions keep heating up, and hopefully you'll find this month's compilation of reading helpful!

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