[Tsc] going to the moon vs boiling the ocean

[Chris Kantarjiev]

It seems to me that saying

"The Open Grid Forum should commit all its available resources to the goal, that 
before this decade is out, commercial and academic organizations will build real 
operational grids using OGSA based components!"

is like President Kennedy saying that we should go to the moon using multi-stage 
rockets that used JP-5 fuel and core memory guidance computers.

Again, I'm not trying to knock OGSA, but I'm trying to set the right level for 
this discussion and the document. The goal statement of the organization should 
not include a specific technology solution.

The terms "grid" and "grid computing" have a long, storied, and somewhat 
checkered past. The term has gotten quite muddy. Articles like

http://weblog.infoworld.com/gridmeter/archives/2006/07/a_broader_scope.html

draw this in sharp relief.

We should take advantage of this inflection point to recapture the mindshare 
around "grid", by setting and stating goals crisply.

I assert that grid computing is utility computing, on a range of hardware, in a 
range of architectures - it's not just HPC computing, stealing cycles from one 
another's supercomputers any more. (Nor is it, really, about cycle recovery from 
desktops or embarrassingly parallel applications like SETI at Home. Those are 
interesting, they got the term out into the marketplace of ideas, but we're not 
going to be developing organizational strategy around those.)

Grid computing is about these things:

- infrastructure virtualization
- resource pooling & sharing
- self monitoring & improvement
- dynamic resource provisioning
- highest quality of service

OGF's goals and the TSC's strategic roadmap need to capture all this.

Well, *I* think so. I'd be interested to know what others think.

Best,
chris