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GRIDTODAY 2004: FOCUSING ON COMMERCIAL GRID APPLICATIONS

GRIDtoday 2004 (Gt04), the first major conference and exhibition to focus on the emerging market for commercial business applications of Grid computing, will be held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 24-26, 2004. The conference is expected to attract more than 4,000 business and technical professionals from organizations of all sizes interested in understanding the benefits and challenges of deploying Grid computing.

As part of the event's focus on linking those who are enabling Grid computing with those who will use Grid computing in commercial environments, Gt04 will include a special VIP program for CIOs from some of the largest industrial organizations worldwide, who will participate in a full day of VIP presentations discussing the current state of Grid deployment and the roadmap for various Grid enabling technologies. Organizations involved in data- intensive computing stand to realize tremendous efficiency gains and productivity improvements from Grid computing, but the CIOs and other IT decision makers face the challenge of bringing together hardware, software, tools, interconnects and industry standards to enable wide-spread adoption. Gt04 will address these challenges head on, with expert panels representing the latest in technology along with experienced commercial users. According to Shahin Kahn, Vice President for High Performance and Technical Computing at Sun Microsystems, "CIOs want to avoid cost and reduce complexity, and they want a Grid infrastructure so they never again face the problem of too many under-utilized systems in one place and not enough capacity somewhere else. The GT04 event will be a great place to see the state of the art and learn the best practices."

Gt04 is presented by IBM and Sun Microsystems. Participating sponsors include Intel, Butterfly.net, HP and Platform Computing.

GRID COMPUTING: THE NEXT BIG THING

Grid computing refers to applying the power and resources of many computers in a network to address computing problems that require a great number of computer processing cycles and the ability to manage extremely large amounts of data. Grid computing links many different computers from several locations into one large virtual computer, making all of the collective computing power available to the users in the enterprise. By doing this, it turns processing power into a utility, like water or electricity, that can be bought and used as needed, depending on the job at hand.

For example, when the GM facilities are asleep in Europe, the US facilities can re-direct the unused compute resources to other compute-intensive needs within GM worldwide, effectively turning the GM from a communications network into a computational network. Grid computing is considered one of the major technological leaps of the 21st Century because it puts the key to enormous computing power into the hands of everyone--at a reasonable price.

As global organizations face tremendous pressure to increase IT efficiency during challenging economic times, Grid computing offers the potential to achieve higher throughput and a better return on both departmental and enterprise-wide IT investments. In business-critical environments, Grid computing is becoming the known approach to increasing an organization's productivity while offering a significantly improved return on initial enterprise computing investments. According to industry analysts, the market for Grid computing is expected to expand tenfold in the next four years.

"The long view on Grid computing is that it, like several revolutionary developments before it, will permeate all aspects of future computing-that industry, government, and academic institutions will all take part in its construction and its use," said Rick Stevens, Division Director, Mathematics and Computer Science, Argonne National Laboratory, and Professor of Computer Science, University of Chicago. "As any new technology starts to migrate from the research and scientific spawning grounds to the demanding business environments of the commercial computing markets, confusion between myth and reality can lead to widespread frustration and inefficient implementations. We believe Gt04 will be an invaluable executive education forum to help the commercial computing industry IT planners understand realistic technology expectations, timeframes and roadmaps."

"Geographic and even organizational boundaries as they relate to sharing of computer resources could eventually be non-existent with the tremendous promise of Grid computing," said Mark Watson, XX of the Federal Reserve. "Grid computing communities are rallying worldwide to develop and deploy this next important wave of distributed computing. It's only smart business to get involved at this stage and Gt04 should prove to be an excellent and much- needed forum for helping establish the adoption of commercial Grid computing."

Emerging Grid technologies are being considered or deployed for numerous applications, including: pharmaceutical companies that are analyzing elaborate DNA sequences to develop highly tailored and safer drugs; automobile makers that simulate car crashes to improve design times and improve automotive safety; aircraft designers that are optimizing aerodynamic structural designs, particularly wing shape; brokerages that run "what if" scenarios on client portfolios with every market fluctuation; oil companies now analyzing massive amounts of geological data to determine the most promising drilling locations; and online gaming, which enables millions of gamers worldwide to play together in real-time, immersive, three-dimensional worlds.

"For decades, academia, government organizations, and commercial enterprises have independently hammered out their own plans for high-performance computing," said Charlie Catlett, leader of the Global Grid Forum, the leading organization setting standards and specifications for Grid deployment. "With the Grid, we can meld our experiences, and ultimately benefit from collaborations and strengths that each community can bring to bear on future endeavors, with tremendous benefits to industry, government and academia. Commercial involvement in GGF is strong: 40% of GGF participants are from industry, and two thirds of GGF sponsoring organizations are commercial companies."

Several communities, commercial enterprises in particular, stand to benefit from participation in Gt04. "While a number of conferences and events have featured detailed discussions of Grid enabling technologies, no one has addressed the commercial applications and business implications of Grid computing," said Mike Bernhardt, Gt04 conference program co-director. "We've heard from many early users of commercial Grid environments who are asking for this orientation. We plan to establish the GRIDtoday event as a catalyst to the widespread adoption of commercial Grid computing. Furthermore, Gt04 is being designed to complement the technical development programs of key Grid community organizations such as the Global Grid Forum and Globus."

Gt04 is expected to attract a large number of both commercial and technical high-end computing users from industries such as automotive, aerospace, energy, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and pharmaceutical. While some other conferences have focused on academic and government use of Grid technologies, this will be the first conference devoted to the implementation of commercial Grid applications and addressing the challenges of transferring technology and support from the academic and government communities.

Commercial use of the Grid is already demonstrating significant results in the design of automobiles and airplanes, in telecommunications, and in the gaming industry. "The timing for Gt04 is perfect," said David Levine, CEO of Butterfly.net. "We believe 2004 will be a pivotal year for the early adoption cycle of Grid computing in the gaming industry. Understanding the potential benefits of Grid implementation, as well as the possible barriers, will be key to our IT planning for the remainder of this decade."

More information on Gt04 is available at http://www.gridtoday.com/04/conference/index.htm or info@gt04.com; for Gt04 program or speaking opportunities, write speakers@gt04.com; for sponsorship opportunities, sponsors@gt04.com; and exhibitor information, exhibits@gt04.com. Gt04 is presented by IBM and Sun Microsystems. Participating sponsors include Intel, Butterfly.net, HP, Platform Computing, and Linux Networks.