GCJ: Tell us about GridwiseTech. Who you are, what you do, any products, and what makes you unique?

Plaszczak: GridwiseTech is an independent expert on Grid, SOA and virtualization, with the mission to turn avant-garde technology to customer's business benefits. GridwiseTech's product is the objective, independent know-how based on long business and industry experience. We provide management consulting as well as technical assistance.

GridwiseTech is an expert on several Grid product arenas, enough to mention portal frameworks (GridSphere, EnginFrame, Liferay...), DRM and job management solutions (Platform LSF and Symphony, Sun N1 Grid Engine, Cluster Resources' Moab, PBS family, Globus Toolkit...), data grid and data access solutions from eXludus, GigaSpaces, Gemstone and Tangosol, security toolkits and plethora of other distributed frameworks. We are gladly assisting customers in putting the puzzle together.

GCJ: Last year there was a fair amount of press touting the lead Europe has in "Grid Computing" compared to other continents. As the head of a European SME, for whom Grid Computing is the focal point of business, what is your opinion on this?

Plaszczak: We continue to see largest demand for independent advice in the USA where many our customers are present, as well as in the Far East. I can confirm that a growing trend of customer enquiries is also visible in Europe, possibly enhanced by significant amount of funding that EU reserves for grids and emerging technologies. That said, geography doesn't matter that much for businesses today - being based in Europe, we serve customers in the USA, Europe and Japan, ranging from big names such as BP, CNN, SAIC, Ricoh, and Philips to public sector to medium and small businesses.

GCJ: Our President, Greg Nawrocki, is calling for 2007 to be the year of the Grid Application - your thoughts on what that means and how it happens?

Plaszczak: Wearing my system integrator's hat, we often need to tackle applications that aren't grid-enabled by the vendor. Currently the industry is pressing on application producers in all sectors to make their source code grid aware. Several vendors have positively responded to the call, enough to mention Reuters, Murex, Callypso, Sungard, Tillinghast, Numerix, OpenLink and many more. On-site integration of those tools with grid frameworks is relatively easy and results with further cost savings for end users. The Year of Grid Application could promote those forward thinking vendors as well as attract other producers to favor Grid paradigm, standards and interfaces in their architectures, for the eventual benefit of end customer.

GCJ: Do you have any customers or case studies that you could talk to describing real word use of Grid applications?

Plaszczak: There are plenty of Grid apps in production today. Our customer list is public and available off www.gridwisetech.com. Financial sector uses grids to calculate risk, price derivatives and complex instruments, search for money fraud patterns and shorten reporting times. In Oil & Gas and Geosciences, grids are used in reservoir simulations and geology research. In Engineering, design cycles are radically shortened by grid simulations. In addition, next generation distributed systems are round the corner: medical institutions will soon use grids to securely exchange patient data. Corporations from any sector will integrate their resources with their customers, benefiting from continuous resource exchange and information flow. There are plenty of other fascinating examples.

GCJ: A consensus in recent press is that we'll start to see less of the term "Grid Computing" and more of it's breakdown into component structures such as Virtualization and SOA. How do you see Virtualization and SOA fitting into the Grid application mix?

Plaszczak: As explained in the book we published in 2005 together with Rich Wellner, resource virtualization is a fundamental concept in grids. Service oriented architecture is natural (although not compulsory) way to expose those virtualized resources to applications, portals and users. Thus Grid in a quite natural way implements SOA, at the same time enabling virtualization. I am glad that finally, there seem to be a consensus in the press that the three terms are indeed very close to each other.

GCJ: What are some of the most apparent hurdles you see to mainstream acceptance of Grid computing?

Plaszczak: I think it's been mainstream for years now. As an example, banking sector has seen grid technologies in production for seven years at least. Most of our customers are happily using or will soon be using grids in this or that way. An inherent feature of grid is that it is working behind the scenes. Typically, when we interview grid end users in corporations, we are met with surprise as they don't even consider themselves grid users! Hence a possible misperception that Grid computing has not been widely adopted. Also, it is important to remember that corporations deploy modern technology based on its business value, ranging from simple cost reduction to ability to attack new challenges. The mission of GridwiseTech is to turn emerging technologies into those business benefits. Thus, we do not see value in introducing Grid computing in situations where it does not clearly link to customer's business goals.

GCJ: How do you see professional services fitting into the mix to help drive adoption and mainstream acceptance.

Plaszczak: Independent consultants can help in several situations. In the feasibility phase, they can assess the realistic cost as well as expected ROI of a grid installation. In the planning phase, customer is met with a challenge of choosing among numerous Grid products on the market, not easily comparable (execution management, data access, portal, security framework, SOA layer). Independent expert with adequate experience is able to select the best product portfolio for the particular customer's case. Third, grids require certain amount of technical work, especially when integrating, tuning and supporting application and middleware layers. We have also assisted numerous customers with software engineering in the development phase.

GCJ: What's on the docket for GridwiseTech this year? What big announcements or developments will we see?

Plaszczak: We have a number of fascinating projects going on in parallel, implementing a complete Grid software stack for various customers. As the customers from banking, oil and gas and medical institutions are typically application centric, the eventual goal is to have complex, specialized applications available remotely through a rich, web-based client interface. Behind the scenes, the apps use powerful grid resources and data centers, which are hidden from customers. Some of these applications in their trial form might soon become available online, off our website, so stay tuned!

Other than that, GridwiseTech will continue to serve customers in sectors such as banking and finance, engineering, oil and gas, electronics, medicine and pharmacy. Besides our presence in the USA, Western Europe and Japan, this year we also plan to look at the emerging Central and Eastern Europe markets, including countries such as Poland with mature economy and solid technical culture.

We plan to further strengthen our relationship with partners. We just signed the partner agreement with Platform Computing, we also have great relationship with Sun Microsystems, Cluster Resources and IBM.

GridwiseTech will be present at the coming Open Grid Forum (Manchester, UK, May), International Supercomputer Conference (Dresden, Germany, June), Krakow Grid Workshop'07 (Krakow, Poland, October) and SC'07 (Reno, Nevada, November). We are always happy to talk about business challenges that can be solved by grids and other emerging technologies. To arrange a chat at any of those events, email me and we will be glad to schedule a meeting with my colleagues or myself.

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