Tech Heavyweights Form Grid-Computing Alliance

A group of high-tech heavyweights launched on Tuesday a consortium focused on building interoperability standards for grid computing, a goal that may not be achievable with its current membership.

The Enterprise Grid Alliance's founding members was nearly a who's who in the industry, with companies such as EMC, Fujitsu, Siemens Computers, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Oracle and Sun Microsystems. Among the missing, however, were Microsoft and IBM.

A major goal of the EGA, based in San Ramon, Calif., is to develop compliance tests to ensure that products incorporating the group's specifications are interoperable. This is important because grid computing requires several layers of technology, which means a variety of vendors' products would be deployed, ranging from operating systems and network management software to business applications and desktops.

The absence of Microsoft, which has a monopoly in desktop operating systems, and IBM, whose product line reaches into nearly every area of computing, means its unlikely the EGA could meet its interoperability goal with its current membership.

"If those two companies choose to go in some other direction, then it may be very difficult for the view that the grid alliance holds to come to predominate," Dan Kusnetzky, analyst for International Data Corp., said.Microsoft was unavailable for immediate comment, but IBM said it was taking a close look at the alliance.

"We were invited (to join), and we're currently evaluating the goals and mission of the organization and will make a decision at a later date," and IBM spokesman said.

EGA President Donald Deutsch said the consortium is open and vendor neutral, and any company not yet a member can join at any time. "You pay your money, you take your place at the table," he said.

Within academic and research centers, grid computing is an architecture for sharing processing resources across a network, so that all machines function as one large supercomputer. Enterprise vendors are building technology to extend that concept into corporate computing environments, so coompanies can allocate computer power to business processes on an as-needed basis. The end result would be a more efficient use of computing resources.

The EGA board, comprised of the members listed above, as well as NEC and Network Appliance, have approved five working groups, which will each take up a different component of grid computing. Those areas include reference models, component provisioning, data provisioning, utility accounting and metrics, and security, Deutsch said.The EGA's goals are necessary to achieve vendor-neutral, standards-based grid computing, but it remains to be seen whether the organization will be successful. Besides the absence of IBM and Microsoft, the group's membership also doesn't include influential open-source organizations building parallel processing technology and other important grid-computing components, Kusnetzky said.

"Like every other alliance or consortium I've seen in the past, quite often there's a large set of noises and ballyhoo made when the alliance is first created, and then we see it quietly disappear over time," Kusnetzky said.

Besides the alliance members already listed, other founding companies include AMD, Ascential Software, Cassatt, Citrix, Data Synapse, Enigmatec, Force 10 Networks, Novell, Optena, Paremus and Topspin.