[Globus] Important announcement from GlobusWORLD (fwd)

[Guy Rixon]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2004 10:25:51 -0800
From: Lee Liming <liming at mcs.anl.gov>
To: Announce at globus.org
Subject: [Globus] Important announcement from GlobusWORLD

The following announcement was made this morning at GlobusWorld, and it
should be of interest to the Grid community at large.  Please see our
website at http://www.globus.org/wsrf for all of the details.

            -- The Globus Alliance Team


Grid and Web Services Standards to Converge

New Specifications Will Ease Development and Deployment of Web Services

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 01/20/2004 -- GLOBUSWORLD -- Akamai,
The Globus Alliance, HP, IBM, Sonic Software and TIBCO today proposed new
Web services specifications that will integrate Grid and Web services
standards. The new WS-Notification and WS-Resource Framework represent the
first time a common, standards-based infrastructure will be available for
business applications, Grid resources and systems management. These new
specifications will help customers lower costs, speed deployment and enable
integration across and outside of the enterprise.

"These new Web services specifications will significantly extend the types
of enterprise solutions customers can easily deploy," said Karla Norsworthy,
Director of Dynamic e-Business Technologies, IBM. "These new specifications
are important for key business applications and provide customers with the
ability to utilize a common Web services based infrastructure that support
of Grid and management based solutions."

"Web services technology is a key enabler of the Adaptive Enterprise, where
business processes and IT are synchronized to capitalize on change.
Customers want information technology to behave as a highly efficient,
flexible service that can quickly accommodate change in real time," said Al
Smith, chief technology officer, Management Software Organization, HP. "The
flexibility of an open, standards-based approach is the only way to bring
together heterogeneous resources into an effective, manageable IT
environment."

The WS-Notification specification and the WS-Resource Framework will provide
a scalable pub/sub messaging model and the ability to model stateful
resources using Web services. Stateful resources are elements that can be
modeled including physical entities (such as servers) to logical constructs
(such as business agreements and contracts). Access to these stateful
resources enables customers to realize business efficiencies including just
in time procurement with multiple suppliers, systems outage detection and
recovery and Grid-based workload balancing.

WS-Notification can automatically trigger an action in the IT infrastructure
once certain criteria have been met. This can include suppliers
automatically being notified to bid to replenish inventory once current
inventory drops to a set level. Several suppliers can be notified of this
depletion in inventory and WS-Notification can be set up so that only the
supplier with the best bid fills the order. The authors of WS-Notification
include Akamai, The Globus Alliance, HP, IBM, SAP, Sonic Software, and
TIBCO.

"To date, Web Services standards have primarily addressed companies'
requirements around definition and management of services. WS-Notification
proposes to also specify an agreed upon definition for events," said Derek
Collison, vice president of Products and Technologies for TIBCO Software.
"Events are what bring a service-oriented architecture to life and a
standardized definition for events will accelerate delivery of real-time
business to more companies at lower cost."

The WS-Resource Framework includes:


--  Modeling Stateful Resources with Web services.   A white paper
    describing how to utilize the related specifications to model the
resources
    in the context of Web services.

--  WS-Resource Properties defines how data associated with a stateful
    resource can be queried and changed using Web services technologies.
This
    allows clients to build applications to efficiently read and update data
    associated with resources, such as contracts, servers or  purchase
orders.

--  WS-Resource Lifetime, which allows the user to specify the period
    during which a resource definition is valid.   For example, WS Resource
    Lifetime can automatically update suppliers from all systems once
contracts
    or service level agreements expire, or deleting products from inventory
    systems that are no longer being manufactured.

The authors of the new framework include, The Globus Alliance, HP and IBM.
"Sonic Software is pleased to be part of the effort to standardize these
critical elements of enterprise infrastructure," said Gordon Van Huizen, CTO
for Sonic Software. "Scalable, distributed messaging has always been at the
heart of an enterprise service bus (ESB), allowing resilient, flexible
connectivity and interaction between applications, data sources and business
partners. WS-Notification and the WS-Resource Framework promise to speed the
adoption of ESBs by offering rich interoperability across enterprise
middleware, while supporting a unified, service-oriented fabric for
application integration, data access and resource management."

"The Globus Alliance is enthusiastic about this latest step in harmonizing
Grid services and Web services," said Ian Foster, Argonne National
Laboratory associate division director for Mathematics and Computer Science
and University of Chicago professor of computer science. "WS-Resource
Framework will add clear value for users of the Globus Toolkit and will
hasten acceptance of the open standards that are key to the Grid's broad
adoption for e-Science and e-Business."

"Akamai is excited to collaborate with these new specifications that
significantly advance the Open Services Grid Architecture," said Chris
Schoettle, Executive Vice President, Technology, Networks & Support, at
Akamai. "This effort addresses the growing need for on demand applications
that are the underpinning of a resilient, scalable and efficient e-business
infrastructure. Akamai's globally distributed computing platform is enabling
enterprises to realize new business efficiencies through Web Services and
the OSGA."

This family of new specifications provides a foundation for the Open Grid
Services Architecture. Using WS-Resource Framework and WS-Notification, Grid
infrastructures and applications can now be built using Web services
specifications. This will facilitate customers' ability to access and share
computing resources on demand over the Internet, relying on an
infrastructure that is resilient, self-managing and always available.
Customers can integrate applications and share data and processing power
with huge potential cost and efficiency savings.

These specifications provide customers with the ability to share
infrastructure across emerging business applications, systems management and
grid computing.


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Contacts:
Ron Favali
IBM
914 766 4776
favali at us.ibm.com

Sherri Stuart
HP
856 638 6249
sherri.stuart at hp.com