Transcript OGF eScience Function Geoffrey Fox OGF 23 Barcelona GFSG Meeting June 1 2008 © 2006 Open Grid Forum.

OGF eScience Function
Geoffrey Fox
OGF 23 Barcelona
GFSG Meeting
June 1 2008
© 2006 Open Grid Forum
Some Principles and Issues
• Aim at Relevance and Excellence exploiting loose flexible
interactions with Standards and Enterprise
• Few activities will lead to new standards but loose coupling of
eScience and Standards will be mutually fruitful
• Many activities jointly interesting and best jointly organized by
Enterprise and eScience
• Problem to address: Attract more of eScience community.
• I believe one must aim at the leaders in field as these ensure excellence.
• Current attendance levels due partly to view that OGF is a
standards organization (Forum part not common perception)
• But dominant problem that “Grids are stale” and in US “Grid funding”
small and “(Tera)Grid directions” unclear
• Grids no longer on Gartner Hype Chart
• Important to attract more software providers
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Gartner 2006
Technology
Hype Curve
Grids entering
trough of
disillusionment
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Gartner 2007
Technology
Hype Curve
No Grids! Semantic Web 10 years out
Web Services also in decline
Clouds will surely be at peak of inflated
expectations in 2008
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General Approach
• A few key community/research groups such as GIN
and (perhaps in future) Clouds
• Major part of program is event community call and
special workshops organized by leadership
• Special series like software provider forum but need
large attendance to work
• Difficult to fit into current events; European events have
enough attendance but little time
• Disseminate through web-based record and special
issues of journals.
• Currently 8 submissions to general OGF 2008 special issue
• Previously had special issues on portals (3), workflow, GIS
and provenance with a total of 80 published papers.
• Do approximately one special issue per year
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OGF Special Issue 2008
Concurrency&Computation: Practice&Experience
• Reliability in Grid Computing Systems
• The HPC Basic Profile and SAGA: Standardizing Compute Grid
Access in the Open Grid Forum
• Accessing RDF(S) Data Resources in Service-based Grid
Infrastructures
• WS-Naming: Location Migration, Replication, and Failure
Transparency Support for Web Services
• Profiles for Conveying the Secure Communication
Requirements of Web Services
• A General Encoding Framework for Representing Network
Measurement and Topology Data
• Interoperation of World-Wide Production e-Science
Infrastructures
• Using Clouds to Provide Grids Higher-Levels of Abstraction and
Explicit Support for Usage Modes
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Immediate Steps: Clouds
• Continue current approach with a focus on clouds that is very
interesting to many from all OGF functions
• This requires careful planning which is ongoing
• Note “data area” is also interesting to many but mature field
(like workflow) and OGF not well regarded in this area
• Clouds are new and OGF can lead and define attractive
activities that will draw people
• Cloud difficulties
• Clouds did not come from Grid community
• Quite a bit of competition; CCC from CRA and activities at Grid
conferences (HPDC will have a Cloud panel)
• Some think Clouds are “just Grids re-hyped”
• OGF does not have strong contacts with leaders of Cloud initiatives or
virtualization
• Not easy to make major steps at OGF24-25 as clouds mainly US
based; OGF26 is a long time!
• Activity on LinkedIn Cloud forum 100 times that on OGF cloud mailing
list
• Not much interest in cloud standards
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Other Observations
• Attendance at eScience events high but
perhaps mainly people who come for
standards?
• Opportunities for better “web pages” drawing
interest but
• huge competition
• Thought Leadership Series drew no interest from
inside or outside OGF
• Reduced staffing makes harder
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