Making Grid Computing Mainstream

Abstract

The past few years have been good for grid computing. Interest in grid computing has increased exceptionally, numerous academic and industrial research groups are now working on grid projects investigating theoretical and technology-related problems, or developing scientific or commercial grid applications - grid computing even reached the world of politics, it is on the agenda of several governments. The results of these research efforts have shown the large potential of grid systems. It has also become evident that grids should not be limited to only computational problems, this technology could be beneficial in many other areas of our life. Consequently, grid computing technology is now moving from computational grids to service-oriented grids. This new type of grid - grid of services - could provide pervasive access to scientific, commercial, etc. services to anyone, any time, from anywhere and any device.

The talk will look at the recent developments in service-oriented grids, discuss the challenges we face in creating such very large scale systems, and concentrate on architectural, middleware and programming issues. I will also discuss the expected impact of mobile devices, and show how the Java platform, especially Jini technology can contribute to the creation of reliable service grids, and create an unparalleled opportunity to bring grid computing into the mainstream and make it available to the widest developer and user community.