Grid-Computing Toolkit On Track For April Debut

The anticipated next release of the Globus Toolkit for building grid-computing software remains on track for an April debut, developers of the toolset told attendees at the GlobusWorld conference in Boston Tuesday. The new version, Globus Toolkit v. 4, will begin beta testing in two weeks.

Grid computing is a means of performing complex computing tasks using shared resources such as computers, databases, and storage systems. While more commonly used for compute-intensive scientific and engineering tasks, backers say it has business applications as well.

The Globus Toolkit is developed by the Globus Alliance, an open-source software organization. Last month a number of major IT vendors, including IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems, formed the Globus Consortium to develop and promote grid-computing software.

GT4 will continue the toolkit's migration to Web services technology that began with the third release of the technology in 2003, said Steve Tuecke, CEO of Univa Corp. during a keynote speech at the GlobusWorld conference. Tuecke, a former technologist at the Argonne National Lab where much of the early Globus development work was done, helped start Univa last year to provide commercial products and services based on Globus standards.

The GT4 release also will put more emphasis on usability, reliability, and scalability, something that the current GT3 release "had a lot of problems" with, Tuecke acknowledged. "It definitely needed a lot of maturation," he said of GT3.

GT4 will support the latest Web-services standards, Tuecke told GlobusWorld attendees, and offer improved data management, execution management, information service, common runtime, and security capabilities. Data management, for example, will be enhanced by a new GridFTP Server and improved replica-location service, reliable file transfer, and monitoring and discovery features.

Globus developers also promise improved documentation with GT4, a problem with earlier releases.

Later this week at the conference SAP is expected to demonstrate Globus-enabled versions of its Internet Pricing Configurator, Workforce Management, and Advanced Planner & Optimizer applications developed for demonstration purposes, Tuecke said.