GCJ: Tell us a little about yourself, your background and what drove you to take the reigns as CEO for Univa?

Liu: I was most recently the CEO of Intrinsic Technologies, a premier provider of IT services and software. Prior to Intrinsic, I acted as CEO for Callisto Software, which was eventually sold to Novell. I have over 15 years of experience leading high-growth technology companies and a proven track record of rapidly creating value in early stage growth companies. I have always taken an interest in the open source community, especially Univa. This organization is uniquely positioned to help other organizations take advantage of the most widely deployed grids software platform in the world and is paving the way for Virtual Enterprise Grids. When I was asked to act as CEO for Univa, there was no hesitancy; this is the perfect place for me.

GCJ: Univa Cluster Edition seems to be a reaction to deal with more of the here and now of the current grid computing landscape. What made you choose to go down that path?

Liu: We always had the ability to serve clusters but we were heavily focused on Enterprise Grids. There are strong competitors in the cluster market but not focused on the Open Source community. We had the right tools, the right partnerships; it was a natural and logical fit. If we can service customers now at the Cluster level, when they are ready to move to an Enterprise solution we will make the transition smooth and seamless. Univa can support Cluster customers now as opposed to waiting for them to organically evolve to an Enterprise level.

GCJ: In addition to the Globus Toolkit, Univa Cluster Edition integrates well known grid components into it's product offering, Sun Grid Engine, Ganglia and Rocks, what prompted that decision and what were the finer points of that process?

Liu: We wanted our bundle to include the best-of-breed products out there. We were not willing to settle for second best. The partners and tools we have chosen were the ideal fit for Univa Globus Cluster Edition. We demanded the best scheduler, the best monitoring tool - the right tools to compliment the Globus Tool Kit. The Globus and Open Source community deserve nothing less.

GCJ: Univa Cluster Edition has the computational side covered, what about data management and virtualization?

Liu: This is a very exciting topic for Univa. We are working on our next edition of DDM. The Data Distribution Manager (DDM) tool provides an efficient service for tracking, transporting and synchronizing large-scale, distributed data sets. This will drive down the cost of sharing large data sets through efficient use of available bandwidth and storage while ensuring secure and reliable operation at scale. With Univa DDM, the Open Source community can benefit from multi-site replication with updates, synchronization of changes only, and fault tolerance. And those are just a few of the benefits. It is Univa's mission to be the premier choice of software in the Grid marketplace and DDM is another piece of that puzzle fitting into place.

GCJ: Do you anticipate that DDM will help drive grid adoption?

Liu: Absolutely, organizations have been talking about virtualization and gird computing for years and years. Now, organizations are finally evolving to that level of data management. It can save organizations so much time and so much money that it paves the way for the next huge turn in technology. However the benefits of DDM in particular will especially help the adoption rate because it is an Open Source solution. Open Source is the best choice for organizations if they plan on staying abreast of future technologies.

GCJ: Since inception, Univa has been a champion of Open Source and the Globus Tool Kit, has that changed at all?

Liu: Univa positions itself as the premier provider of open source software for clusters and grids, thus, open source is at the core of our value add. At Univa open source is not just a marketing message it is a corporate philosophy. We believe that we have to be a good citizen within the open source community, rather than simply taking from the open source community. Our commitment is to be a strong contributor and thought leader within each open source community that we participate in. In the case of the Globus community, we have backed up our marketing message with real action. Within the last 90 days, we have contributed a number of Globus tool kit related bug fixes back to the Globus community and we have contributed our DDM product to the Globus community as well. The work involved with DDM consisted of a team of developers working for almost a year on the data management product so the contribution of this product to the Globus open source community shows our level of commitment to open source software.

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