Grid Market Project

Overview

Grid computing is recognized as a potential major platform for scientific computing as well as commercial computation in the future. Recently the accelerated development in Grid computing, coupled with developments in Web Service standards, has positioned them as promising next generation computing platforms, not only for research community, but also commercial enterprises. Web service technology has been heavily endorsed by major companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems. Already, many web service specifications have been submitted to standardization bodies for review and approved. With the new Web Service Resource Framework (WSRF) specifications, which signals the joining of Grid and Web Service, it can be foreseen that the specifications/standardization could be the technical catalyst in popularizing service-oriented architecture in Grid computing. On the other hand, the IT industry also realized that Grids will first start to form inside corporate firewalls, after those grids are established will companies look at buying extra capacity on other people's grids -- or renting out their own surplus computing power, which shows the trend of how grid computing is commercialized.

Despite the existing technical catalysts and commercial needs, up till now, almost all research efforts are focused on using Grids within academic community and the adoption of Grid technology by commercial companies have been slow, mainly because there is no existing support for the chargeable Grid services and commercial transactions on them. It requires a complete set of mechanisms that enable Grid services to be registered, discovered, negotiated, and paid for the use. Therefore a framework is needed to build commercial Grid market and support the commercialization of Grid, for organizations to share resources for profit. Such a framework is essential if the Grid is going to evolve from its current experimental status into professional or commercial use. Similar trend has already observed in the Web service community, where MNC like IBM has been driving the technology for e-business solution.

View the Grid Market Framework Components.

Project Status

The contributors of this project includes APSTC members and collaborators from other major research institutes. The current projects that are ongoing right now are:

• Negotiation model
• Information system
• Grid Market testbed