About the Globus Toolkit

"The open source Globus Toolkit is a fundamental enabling technology for the 'Grid,' letting people share computing power, databases, and other tools securely online across corporate, institutional, and geographic boundaries without sacrificing local autonomy. The toolkit includes software services and libraries for resource monitoring, discovery, and management, plus security and file management. In addition to being a central part of science and engineering projects that total nearly a half-billion dollars internationally, the Globus Toolkit is a substrate on which leading IT companies are building significant commercial Grid products.

The toolkit includes software for security, information infrastructure, resource management, data management, communication, fault detection, and portability. It is packaged as a set of components that can be used either independently or together to develop applications. Every organization has unique modes of operation, and collaboration between multiple organizations is hindered by incompatibility of resources such as data archives, computers, and networks. The Globus Toolkit was conceived to remove obstacles that prevent seamless collaboration. Its core services, interfaces and protocols allow users to access remote resources as if they were located within their own machine room while simultaneously preserving local control over who can use resources and when.

The Globus Toolkit has grown through an open-source strategy similar to the Linux operating system's, and distinct from proprietary attempts at resource-sharing software. This encourages broader, more rapid adoption and leads to greater technical innovation, as the open-source community provides continual enhancements to the product..." [adapted from About]

About the Globus Consortium

The Globus Consortium is a non-profit organization formed by global computing leaders who support the Globus Toolkit, the de facto standard for open source grid computing infrastructure. With the full support of leading enterprise hardware and software vendors, the original pioneers of Grid, and the open source Grid development community - The Globus Consortium will leverage its broad base of participants to further accelerate the evolution of Grid in the enterprise.

Through the Globus Consortium, vendors of hardware, software and their customers can work together to accelerate use of the Globus Toolkit in the enterprise by hardening features and speaking with one voice on emerging Grid standards... The Consortium is not a standards-setting body. Rather, the Consortium will work with recognized standards organizations approved by the Board...

The Globus Consortium was formed to advance the open source Globus Toolkit through promotion, support, development, research, education and the embrace of open standards for Grid. Grid refers to an information technology infrastructure that enables the integrated, collaborative use of computers, networks, databases, and scientific instruments owned and managed by many different organizations in many different locations. Grid applications often involve large amounts of data and/or computing and often require secure resource sharing across organizational boundaries...

Founding members of the Globus Consortium include HP, IBM, Intel and Sun Microsystems. The original authors of the Globus Toolkit, including Ian Foster, Steve Tuecke, and Carl Kesselman, helped to found the Globus Consortium and, as board members, help guide the technology roadmap for Globus..." [adapted from the Home Page and FAQ document]

From the Globus Consortium Announcement

The Globus Consortium today [2005-05-02] announced the release of Globus Toolkit, version 4.0 (GT4), developed by the Globus Alliance. The Globus Toolkit is an open standards building block for enterprise-level Grid implementations.

GT4 is the most stable, "enterprise ready" version of the Globus Toolkit ever — incorporating the latest web services standards, new security and authorization features, and the collaborative efforts of a global community of open source Grid developers. GT4 can be downloaded at:

      http://www.globustoolkit.org

"Interoperability, flexibility and the freedom to choose the best vendor products and equipment is what enterprise Grid is all about," said Ian Foster, Board Member with the Globus Consortium. "The leading enterprise Grid vendors and standards bodies are standing behind GT4 as the preferred open source software for enterprise Grids. By building Grids with the Globus Toolkit, and by working with vendors who support the Globus Toolkit — organizations can best position themselves to exploit the full potential of enterprise Grid."

For nearly a decade, a global community of Grid developers have contributed to Globus Toolkit code, and this latest GT4 release includes all of the necessary tools for building an enterprise Grid. Key additions to GT4 include:

• GT4 complies with the latest Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) web services standards, which provides maximum interoperability between different environments.

• GT4 includes initial support for important authorization standards, including Security Markup Language (SAML) and Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML). These provide business with a foundation for building a secure web-services enabled Grid infrastructure.

• GT4 implements the Web Services Resource Framework (WS-RF) and Web Services Notification (WS-N) specifications, which are emerging standards in OASIS backed by major vendors for web services enablement of Grid and resource management systems.

• GT4 features sophisticated authorization and security capabilities. Globus has always been diligent in Grid security, and GT4 is also "enterprise ready" from a security perspective.

"For nearly a decade, major vendors and standards bodies — including the Global Grid Forum (GGF) — have contributed to the open source Globus Toolkit," said Mark Linesch, Chair of the GGF. "The Globus Toolkit has seen terrific success in research, academic and commercial high-performance computing environments. By continuing to align with the latest grid and web services standards, GT4 is poised for broader adoption — particularly in enterprise markets where efficient resource sharing and more effective data integration are becoming increasingly critical."

North Carolina-based MCNC, which tests and deploys advanced networking solutions on its North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN) in partnership with North Carolina universities and state government, recently performed successful "testbed" work on GT4 — with systems set up across the OC48 NCREN backbone. Vendor participants included: Cisco, Gridwise Technologies, IBM, Network Appliance, Red Hat and Sun.

"GT4 brings in all the standards and interfaces," said Wolfgang Gentzsch, the Managing Director at MCNC who oversaw the GT4 testbed efforts. "GT4 is much more flexible — it brings in the ability to easily enhance Grid towards additional services, like accounting and billing, metering and measuring. Now that a larger part of GT4 is based on web services — it is much easier to interface and communicate with other tools which are based on the same web services standards. As a result, more and more commercial tools will be compliant in the near future with Grid services."

Also standing behind the Globus Toolkit are the Globus Consortium Members — HP, IBM, Intel, Nortel, Sun and Univa — all of which have enterprise Grid products and services built on or around the Globus Toolkit. For example, IBM has offered its IBM Grid Toolbox based on the Globus Toolkit, and later this fall will announce a version based on GT4. And Grid Engine, the open source project sponsored by Sun, has been integrated into GT4 for a project at Imperial College in London. MCNC and Gridwise Technologies have also contributed to this effort.

"Globus Toolkit 4.0 allows enterprise users to bring standardized web services into a Grid environment, further simplifying the automated allocation of resources available on a Grid," said Greg Astfalk, Chief Scientist, Office of Corporate Strategy and Technology at HP. "HP sees Grid as a powerful way to virtualize and manage resources, enabling companies to respond to changing business needs and realize HP's vision of becoming Adaptive Enterprises."

"Standards are key to accelerating adoption of Grid Computing in the commercial marketplace," said Ken King, IBM's Vice President of Grid Computing. "A key driver of grid standards is the successful implementation and acceptance of Globus with enterprise customers. The new Globus Toolkit 4.0 adds more robust web services capabilities, enhanced security and powerful authorization features that we believe will be very compelling to our customers as they look at Grid as a way to simplify their infrastructure."

"Sun is actively engaged in bringing the productivity gains of grid computing into the enterprise," said Sohrab Modi, vice president, N1 Grid Systems, Sun Microsystems. "As a major supporter of open standards and open source software, Sun is pleased to see the arrival of Globus Toolkit 4 as another key tool toward achieving widespread use of grid technologies in the enterprise."

"Enterprises are increasingly challenged by constricting IT budgets, yet frustrated with proprietary, inflexible systems that remain under-utilized," said Steve Tuecke, CEO of Univa Corporation, a provider of commercial software, technical support and professional services for the Globus Toolkit. "Since the previous release of the Globus Toolkit, we have witnessed the emergence of many Web Services standards that are relevant for Grid infrastructure. Expanded support for these standards throughout GT4 enables enterprises to more easily integrate existing IT systems with Globus in order to optimize the use of existing computing, storage and networking resources."

Globus Toolkit 4 Press Clippings

• "Globus Toolkit 4 Broadens Choices, Challenges Teams." By Peter Coffee. From eWEEK (May 2, 2005). "Interoperability, security and international open-source access combine to create new competitive mandate. Version 4 of the Globus Toolkit, released today with the sponsorship of the Globus Consortium, is a Web services-oriented platform that signals the readiness of grid computing for mainstream enterprise applications as well as research and supercomputing tasks... Sun Microsystems, a member of the Globus Consortium, has put forward considerable amounts of its own code for open-source grid development including the Sun Grid Engine..."

• Consortium Seeks to Make Grids More Enterprise Network Ready." By Jennifer Mears From Network World (May 2, 2005). "A consortium led by HP, IBM and others to promote commercial adoption of an open source-based grid computing tool kit says a new version of the software will make it easier for companies to roll out distributed computing environments. The Globus Toolkit is a package of standards-based software services and libraries that can be used together or separately to deploy grids. It includes tools for: Resource allocation, monitoring and management; Security, including single sign-on authentication and access rights; Data discovery and management; Data access and portability; Communication among heterogeneous environments; Fault detection..."

• "Globus Consortium Launches Grid Development Projects." By Paul Shread. From InternetNews.com (May 4, 2005). "The Globus Consortium has announced three new development projects for the Globus Toolkit, the de facto standard for grid computing, that the group hopes will speed enterprise adoption of open source grid computing technologies... The three initiatives, launched less than three months after the formation of the Globus Consortium, focus on priority bug fixing, Web services execution management, and documentation."

• "Globus Toolkit 4.0." By Dan Farber. From ZDNet Blog Between the Lines (May 2, 2005). "The main enhancement from version 3.0 is marrying grid protocols with Web services. GT4 includes support for Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) Web services standards, including Web Services Resource Framework (WS-RF) and Web Services Notification (WS-N) specifications; Security Markup Language (SAML); Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML). According to Wolfgang Gentzsch, Managing Director at MCNC, integration with Web services will enable more commercial tools to be compliant with grid services, and critical features such as accounting, metering, billing, and measuring can be more easily implemented..."

• "Grids Get Down to Business." By Martin LaMonica. From CNET News.com (April 27, 2005). "n the coming weeks, the Enterprise Grid Alliance consortium will release technical recommendations for using grids in business. And this week, the open-source Globus Toolkit 4 for writing grid applications will be released. These efforts are attempts to create industry standards, which experts believe are important steps to making the hazy notion of grid computing widespread..."

Principal References

• Announcement 2005-05-02: "Globus Toolkit, Version 4.0 (GT4) Released to Open Source Grid Development Community. Leading Grid Vendors, Standards Bodies and Development Community Call GT4 the Most 'Enterprise Ready' Version To Date."
• Globus: Globus Alliance and Globus Toolkit
• About the Globus Toolkit
• Core Globus Alliance team
• An "Ecosystem" of Grid Components
• Globus Alliance FAQ document
• Globus Toolkit 4.0.0 Download
• "Globus Consortium Update." February 2005. Globus Consortium Journal.
• The Globus Alliance
• Globus Toolkit Homepage
• Ian Foster Column By Ian Foster. From Globus Consortium Journal "... explains the difference between the Globus Consortium, the Global Grid Forum, and the Enterprise Grid Alliance"
• Globus Consortium:
  • Globus Consortium Home Page
  • Globus Consortium FAQ document
  • Recent Globus Toolkit News
  • Globus Consortium Journal "...a discussion forum dedicated to open source Grid issues for enterprise developers and business decision makers."
  • "HP, IBM, Intel and Sun Microsystems Launch Globus Consortium. Leading global technology vendors and Grid scientists support Globus Toolkit as open source Grid infrastructure for the enterprise." Announcement January 24, 2005.