© 2006 Open Grid Forum Geoffrey Fox OGF 23 Barcelona GFSG Meeting June OGF eScience Function

© 2006 Open Grid Forum Some Principles and Issues Aim at Relevance and Excellence exploiting loose flexible interactions with Standards and Enterprise Few activities will lead to new standards but loose coupling of eScience and Standards will be mutually fruitful Many activities jointly interesting and best jointly organized by Enterprise and eScience Problem to address: Attract more of eScience community. I believe one must aim at the leaders in field as these ensure excellence. Current attendance levels due partly to view that OGF is a standards organization (Forum part not common perception) But dominant problem that “Grids are stale” and in US “Grid funding” small and “(Tera)Grid directions” unclear Grids no longer on Gartner Hype Chart Important to attract more software providers

© 2006 Open Grid Forum 3 Gartner 2006 Technology Hype Curve Grids entering trough of disillusionment

© 2006 Open Grid Forum 4 Gartner 2007 Technology Hype Curve No Grids! Semantic Web 10 years out Web Services also in decline Clouds will surely be at peak of inflated expectations in 2008

© 2006 Open Grid Forum General Approach A few key community/research groups such as GIN and (perhaps in future) Clouds Major part of program is event community call and special workshops organized by leadership Special series like software provider forum but need large attendance to work Difficult to fit into current events; European events have enough attendance but little time Disseminate through web-based record and special issues of journals. Currently 8 submissions to general OGF 2008 special issue Previously had special issues on portals (3), workflow, GIS and provenance with a total of 80 published papers. Do approximately one special issue per year

© 2006 Open Grid Forum OGF Special Issue 2008 Concurrency&Computation: Practice&Experience Reliability in Grid Computing Systems The HPC Basic Profile and SAGA: Standardizing Compute Grid Access in the Open Grid Forum Accessing RDF(S) Data Resources in Service-based Grid Infrastructures WS-Naming: Location Migration, Replication, and Failure Transparency Support for Web Services Profiles for Conveying the Secure Communication Requirements of Web Services A General Encoding Framework for Representing Network Measurement and Topology Data Interoperation of World-Wide Production e-Science Infrastructures Using Clouds to Provide Grids Higher-Levels of Abstraction and Explicit Support for Usage Modes

© 2006 Open Grid Forum Immediate Steps: Clouds Continue current approach with a focus on clouds that is very interesting to many from all OGF functions This requires careful planning which is ongoing Note “data area” is also interesting to many but mature field (like workflow) and OGF not well regarded in this area Clouds are new and OGF can lead and define attractive activities that will draw people Cloud difficulties Clouds did not come from Grid community Quite a bit of competition; CCC from CRA and activities at Grid conferences (HPDC will have a Cloud panel) Some think Clouds are “just Grids re-hyped” OGF does not have strong contacts with leaders of Cloud initiatives or virtualization Not easy to make major steps at OGF24-25 as clouds mainly US based; OGF26 is a long time! Activity on LinkedIn Cloud forum 100 times that on OGF cloud mailing list Not much interest in cloud standards

© 2006 Open Grid Forum Other Observations Attendance at eScience events high but perhaps mainly people who come for standards? Opportunities for better “web pages” drawing interest but huge competition Thought Leadership Series drew no interest from inside or outside OGF Reduced staffing makes harder 8