(03/07/05)At the recent GlobusWorld conference on grid computing in Boston we hosted a panel discussion titled "Grid and the Future of the Network Machine" which featured a cross section of vendor speakers, representatives from Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., Intel Corp., Nortel Networks Corp. and SAP AG.
The conversation was far reaching but a handful of points stood out (read full transcript). One concerned whether grid intelligence ultimately would migrate into the network.
Franco Travostino, director of advanced technology at Nortel, said intelligence has to be everywhere, a sentiment echoed by Cisco's Rob Redford, vice president of product and technology marketing: "Intelligence has to be in all the layers, in upper level middleware and lower middleware, in the network, in the operating system. The issue is how do we make the different layers -- rather than having an air gap between them -- how do we move them together so they can work together more efficiently?"
Blending the layers is necessary, the panelists said, if grids are to achieve their true promise. Redford said: "When we talk about intelligent networks, we're talking about networks that actually participate with the applications and the services. Grid, service-oriented architectures, Web services -- we think all of these eventually have to flow together and will ultimately change the architecture of enterprise networks."
David Martin, IBM's program director of Internet standards and technology, said: "The real challenge for the industry is to integrate these different layers under a common management structure. The solution is standards. A lot of the win in grid is not necessarily around utilization -- it's cheap to buy more processors and storage. The win is to be able to bring up a new application quickly and efficiently and with one common management interface."
Vendors are counting on standards to ensure their respective grid components will play together. Michael Feinberg, vice president and CTO of HP's Network Storage Solutions, said: "The industry as a whole is moving toward common standards, and the Globus tool kit is helping."
IBM's Martin added: While some vendors talk about the Adaptive Enterprise and others talk about the Dynamic Grid Infrastructure, "if you dig down in all of the market speak you find an incredibly common set of things that are being done."
And what of grid-enabled applications? SAP's Alexander Gebhart, development manager of Netweaver, said there are a lot of challenges, but the company is well beyond the prototype phase and readying product for production. He wouldn't comment on timing.