1. NextGRID: From Compute Grids to Grid SOAs and beyond
Dr Mark Parsons Commercial Director - EPCC and NeSC
NextGRID Project Chairman

2. The Grid Today Is a huge success for both business and science
Significant business adoption of cluster Grids - “mature technology” – Merrill Lynch
But we see different facets
The scientific community has embraced collaboration and new applications
The business community has embraced resource management and provision

3. Conflicting messages Grid is sold on two conflicting messages:
1. Invest in new applications on the Grid and they will enable completely new ways of working and transform your business
2. Invest in the Grid and it will greatly lower the total cost of your IT infrastructure
It’s no surprise only the second message has been grasped by business to date
Which is why Grid SOAs are only being adopted very slowly

4. Grid offering services
Grid Research Vision
Next Generation Grid Experts group: ftp://ftp.cordis.lu/pub/ist/docs/ngg_eg_final.pdf
Transparent and reliable
Persistent, pervasive and ubiquitous
Open to wide user & provider communities
Secure, with trust across multiple domains
Easy to use, configure and manage
Person-centric yet Scalable
Standards based
Grid offering services
European citizens
Grid service providers
The Grid vision expands on the sharing vision of the web.
Here anyone can be a provider, anyone can be a customer.
Importantly, it defines the standards required to let everyone work together.
Explain why this is a good model
Analogies with the subcontracting model in business
In the Grid computing model, businesses need to own fewer of their own resources. Third parties provide facilities (Grid service providers); users get access to services. Businesses can also offer services over the Grid, an extension to the electricity grid analogy.
Private sector
Public sector

5. The Grid tomorrow NextGRID focuses on Grid for business
Vision is of future Grids:
that are economically viable;
in which new and existing business models are possible;
in which development, deployment and maintenance are easy; and
in which the provisions for security and privacy give confidence to businesses, consumers and the general public.

6. Creating the next generation Grid
If defining architecture was easy there would be no NextGRID
Innovation is crucial
Key stages
conceptualisation
design
experimentation
analysis
Implementing this cyclical process has been central to developing the NextGRID architecture

7. Three key architectural principles
Service Level Agreements
central to the conceptual model of NextGRID
all interactions between services are predicated by a bipartite SLA
Dynamic Grid infrastructure
extensive capabilities for dynamic service composition and federation are provided
Minimal set of capabilities
a set of capabilities are defined that a NextGRID service can expect to find in a NextGRID environment

8. SLAs
All interactions are predicated by the agreement of a bipartite SLA

9. SLAs (cont)
Multiple service relationships are foreseen

10. Architectural components
Allows composed services to deliver business value
Dynamic Orchestrators
(discovery, workflow, invocation, etc)
Protects services and bipartite relationships
Management
Systems
and SLAs
Data-centric
Functional Systems
Dynamic Trust and
Security
Defines services provided over bipartite relationships
Allows consistent description and management of all applications
Base standards (http, wsdl, soap, naming,
notification, addressing, policy, security…)
Provides basic facilities and interoperability

11. Electronic Data Record (EDR) Processing
NextGRID Application Areas
Digital Media (DM)
Financial Applications:
Supply Chain Management (SCM)
Electronic Data Record (EDR) Processing
Images provided by Dreamstime.com, SAP, Kino, GridSystems

12. Key outputs
Architectural Component Designs
Generalised Specifications
Grid Standards resulting from and influenced by NextGRID
Generalised Specifications
Experience
Software Components
Case Studies
Download Generalised Specifications at:

13. The Grid of the future
Service orientation brings collaborative Grids within reach of business
In NextGRID we’ve focussed on
Flexible Business Models  Specific QoS Terms
Dynamic Security  Dynamic Composition
Economic Sustainability  Privacy
Facilitated Management  Interactivity Support
Next steps are to create Service Oriented Knowledge Utilities - SOKUs

14. Service Oriented Knowledge Utilities
In going from Grids  SOKU you need to re-evaluate what a Grid is
SOKU’s are built from cooperating services
In a SOKU everything is a service – including the application
There are many similarities between SOKUs and Agent-style technologies
The difference being that SOKUs may deliver where agent’s haven’t …

15. Key technical challenges
SOKU lifecycle management
robust, efficient, context aware services
high-levels of interoperability, smooth composition and automatic self-organisation of software are required
management of functional and non-functional properties
Underpinning semantic technologies
we are only at the beginning of the use of semantics to bridge the gap from human to computer
Adaptability, dependability and scalability
we need to rethink our design paradigms
Trust and security

16. Key non-technical challenges
Lack of real business user engagement
Useful infrastructures get stuck in outdated technology
Already happening with some EU Grid infrastructures
Lack of standardisation
Without standards Grid SOAs will always remain within single organisations
Lack of long-term research policy
Need to keep the faith over 10+ years

17. Summary
Current research work is putting in place many of the underpinning technologies required to move the Grid forward to build SOKUs
Many of these are complex research issues
There is much to do before we realise even simple SOKUs
Key factor in success will be engagement with real end-users and service providers
We need real business challenges to help us design the next generation of Grid SOAs