Grids@SC2004:

THE GRIDBUS PROJECT TO RELEASE ExcelGrid SOFTWARE

ExcelGrid is a tool that helps in extending Microsoft Excel from the desktop to enterprise and global Grids as they provide the benefits of improved job execution speed and result in getting processing done faster. It provides a front-end to a Grid via Excel spreadsheet and performs user-defined computations on enterprise Grids created using Alchemi and global Grids built using Gridbus coupled with Globus, UNICORE and also Alchemi technologies. It allows users to run jobs on remote computers, using an easy-to-use GUI, and retrieve the results via the standard Excel spreadsheet interface

The ExcelGrid plug-in is developed by the Gridbus Project, Grid Computing and Distributed Systems (GRIDS) Lab, Dept. of Computer Science and Software Engineering, the University of Melbourne, Australia. The project is partially supported by Australian Research Council Discovery Project grant, Storage Technology and the University of Melbourne.

Main Features:

• Ability to run parametric-sweep applications composed using Excel, on remote systems.
• Simple GUI interface to select/compose jobs, and launch them on the Grid.
• Read input from cells in a spreadsheet.
• Ability to monitor running jobs, and retrieve the results back to Excel spreadsheet.
• Support for Gridbus broker and Alchemi middleware.
• No changes to the spreadsheet or additional programming/macros are needed.

The source code, binaries, and manual for Ex Download information: celGrid can be downloaded from http://www.Gridbus.org/excelGrid/.

Contact Information

For further details about ExcelGrid and/or the Gridbus project please contact:

• Rajkumar Buyya, raj@cs.mu.oz.au.
• Krishna Nadiminti, kna@unimelb.edu.au.

Licenses and Disclaimer

The ExcelGrid plug-in is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL) http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.txt.