GGF Telco-CG and TMF

Agenda Who is the GGF? Telco CG: Review of Charter, Discussion of Milestones Review of the Whitepaper on Role of Telco in the Global Grid Discussion

Understanding GGF Global Grid Forum The Global Grid Forum (GGF) is the community of users, developers, and vendors leading the global standardization effort for grid computing. GGF leads the pervasive adoption of grid computing in research and industry by:  Defining grid specifications that lead to broadly adopted standards and interoperable software  Building an international community for the exchange of ideas, experiences, requirements and best practices Hosted first GridWorld Conference last October in Boston

Participating with GGF GGF is an open, community-driven forum. The GGF community is global in scope and open in its membership structure.  Fairly loose model of membership: show up and contribute Next Standards meeting, the 16 th, is Feb 2006 in Greece Closely associated with Internet2 See:

Understanding Grids Grid computing is increasingly being viewed as the next phase of distributed computing. Built on pervasive Internet standards, grid computing enables organizations to share computing and information resources across department and organizational boundaries in a secure, highly efficient manner. Organizations around the world are utilizing grid computing today in such diverse areas as collaborative scientific research, drug discovery, financial risk analysis, and product design.

Addressing Area Business Opportunities Newly formed Telco-CG within the Global Grid Forum Chairs:  Frank Falcon, British Telecom  Pramila Mullan, France Telecom  Franco Travostino, Nortel

Telco Community Group Charter Focuses on how network providers and the Grid community can seek to create common approaches in dealing with significant changes in the offering of services and applications, as well as using infrastructure that will support grids and their evolution. Will seek advice and opinions from customers, network providers, network equipment vendors, Grid middleware and applications vendors and technologists.

Objectives – Define Telco Roles Explore the 3 Telco roles in the Grid ecosystem:  How network providers (carriers, PTOs) will need to evolve their networks and support services in order to support large-scale grid traffic and other novel requirements posed by Grids? The goal of this roadmap is to facilitate the deployment of large-scale, dependable Grids.  How can network providers use Grid technologies to improve their own internal operations (e.g., billing, events' analysis, and modeling)?  How can network providers become suppliers of Grid managed services and adopt new business models that are profitable? Does TMF have suggestions for others?

Objectives – Enabling Roles Develop a Roadmap which also explores the inter- relationship between the 3 roles Identify network and other requirements that these roles have in terms of standards, architecture, inter-provider agreements, etc. The scope of the telco-cg will consider both the technical and policy viewpoints (including business drivers). Both aspects are of crucial importance to the work of this research group. The telco-cg will serve as a focal point for outreach and liaison activities between the GGF and other networking communities (inclusive of standard bodies).

Basic Values Telco Provides Grid Users Telcos provide connectivity infrastructure  Geographically and User ubiquitous  Fundamentally provides “shared” assets on a “time-division” basis to any user  Keeps costs very low compared to dedicated connection (since actual usage rate is small)  Providing dedicated connectivity impacts the ubiquity and raises costs considerably

Whitepaper: Telco Role in Global Grid Explores 3 Roles of a Telco  Telco as an enabler (of networking) to Grid providers  Telco as a user of Grid computing  Telco as a Managed Services Provider

Role 1: Enabler to GRID providers Fundamentally role is the provision of high-bandwidth connectivity on a point/point basis Promoting Factors  Managed performance, QOS and reliability  Existing support infrastructure  Ability to flex bandwidth on some systems (ATM & Optical lambdas) Blocking Factors  Pressure on costs could make provision uneconomic GRID owners want to only pay for bandwidth/time used Majority of connectivity infrastructure provides fixed bandwidth  Dedicated Point/Point uses up infrastructure and lowers ubiquity  Value of Telco support not recognised at early stages

Role 2: User of GRID internally Role is to improve the management of the Business through use of GRID technology in the telco's IT division Promoting Factors  Massive number of stand-alone overlays of management systems can be virtualised and operate on Grid  Data Centre virtualisation provides significant performance improvements  Huge improvements in TCO and ROI Blocking Factors  Investments in existing systems  Multiple Operating Systems (OSs) in use  “Use what we Sell” mandatory link into Role 3.

Role 3: Managed GRID Services provider Potential Market Models:  Managed Service: Telco creates/manages the grid but customer owns the assets  Utility Computing: Telco manages grids and owns the assets, leasing use  Combination of the above Promoting Factors  Overcomes the ultimate weakness of other GRID models in their inability to cost-effectively flex geographic connections and bandwidth employed  Provides economically viable services based upon network-centric IT virtualiser engines and label- switched IP connectivity

Role 3: Managed GRID Services provider Blocking Factors  Stand-alone Grid owners still influenced by academia model in that recognition of economic reality of commercial world not in place yet  “Use what we sell” for Telcos needs to be built into investment plans  Multiple OS’s in use by customers  Standard business application not yet entirely suited to GRID use Mainly benefits parallelizable/distributable applications Most business applications are mainly serial (though their performance can be improved even as they stand- but is it enough?)

DISCUSSION On Link with TMF

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