[AG-TECH] GLOBUSWORLD 2004 ANNOUNCES PRELIMINARY PROGRAM

[Mary Fritsch]

GLOBUSWORLD 2004 ISSUES PRELIMINARY PROGRAM WITH FIRST SET OF KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
The premier Grid conference featuring the Globus Toolkit® is set for 
January 20-23, 2004

With planning in full swing for the second GlobusWORLD, conference 
organizers have released the advance program and announced several keynote 
speakers.  The annual event centers on the Globus Toolkit, a suite of 
software and services that are central to the growing field of Grid computing.

GlobusWORLD 2004 will be held January 20-23 in San Francisco.  Preliminary 
program and other details are at http://www.globusworld.org. This year's 
conference builds on successes of the first GlobusWORLD, which attracted 
more than 450 attendees, one-third of whom were from the commercial 
sector.  The conference will deliver a content-rich three days with four 
concurrent sessions of presentations, training and discussions for users at 
all levels, with an additional day devoted solely to workshops on topics 
such as the Grid's use in financial services, the life sciences and medical 
imaging.

Sessions will be led by users, designers, developers, and vendors from the 
research, industry and academic sectors.  They will address strategic 
issues for enterprise planners, such as return on investment, business 
case, and strategic value of the Grid.   In-depth technical issues -- such 
as security, resource management, data access and integration, autonomic 
computing, monitoring and discovery, service management, provisioning, 
meta-scheduling, workflow and Web services -- will be addressed for 
architects, developers, and deployers.

The Globus Toolkit® provides key enabling software and services that let 
people share computing power, databases, and other tools securely online 
across corporate, departmental, institutional, and geographic boundaries 
without sacrificing local autonomy. It has been deployed broadly worldwide 
for both science and industry and has developed a strong community of 
contributors and users.

"Our conference is the only one organized by principals in the Globus 
Alliance, which develops the Grid's foundational middleware," said Ian 
Foster, a primary organizer of the event.  "We have seen another large 
surge of interest in Grid since the June release of Globus Toolkit 3.0, 
which is the first full-scale implementation of the Open Grid Services 
Infrastructure (OGSI).  GlobusWORLD attendees will get the latest and best 
content -- straight from the source.  The program has a good mix of 
speakers from industry and academia, with the sessions focusing on Globus 
Toolkit-based technology and solutions."

That latest version of the toolkit has been redesigned using the new 
OGSA/OGSI specifications, which are making Grids easier to design and 
implement than ever before by using popular Web service standards.  Among 
the other technologies to be featured at GlobusWORLD 2004 are security, 
resource management, data access and integration, autonomic computing, 
monitoring and discovery, service management, provisioning, 
meta-scheduling, workflow and Web services.  In addition to describing the 
currently released software, the conference will feature considerable 
discussion of future Grid standards and Globus Toolkit implementation plans.

The first set of keynote speakers -- with more to be announced later -- 
includes Foster, leader of the Globus Alliance at Argonne National 
Laboratory and the University of Chicago, a central figure in development 
of the Globus Toolkit and definition of the Open Grid Services Architecture 
(OGSA).  Another keynote is Larry Smarr, director of the California 
Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, known as Cal 
IT(2).  Smarr, a pioneer in prototyping a national information 
infrastructure to support academic research, governmental functions, and 
industrial competitiveness, is a member of the National Academy of 
Engineering and the President's Information Technology Advisory 
Committee.  Keynotes representing e-Business include Mark Linesch, vice 
president of Hewlett-Packard's Adaptive Enterprise Program, and Steve 
Yatko, Credit Suisse First Boston's global head of research and development 
IT, who is one of the Computerworld Premier 100 IT Leaders for 2003.

Many of the talks, panels and sessions will focus on real-world experiences 
of Grid deployment, including e-Business and Enterprise Grid 
deployments.  "Globus Insider" sessions will feature a mix of 
architect-level overviews and in-depth developer-level content on all 
aspects of the Globus Toolkit 3.0. A new Globus Development Laboratory will 
let attendees interact with the toolkit's developers.

Use of Globus Toolkit in the financial services industry will be a hot 
topic at the conference, according to Duncan Johnston-Watt, Chief 
Technology Officer at Enigmatec Corporation, a GlobusWORLD 
sponsor.  "Globus Toolkit 3.0 epitomizes the convergence of Grid computing 
and Web Services," he said. "Within eighteen months Enterprise Service Grid 
will be mainstream, with Wall Street taking the lead.  For any Wall Street 
firm that fails to Grid-enable their infrastructure in response to the 
massive structural changes underway in the financial services industry, it 
will put at risk their long-term viability."

Other GlobusWORLD corporate sponsors to date include Hewlett-Packard, IBM 
Grid Computing, inSORS Integrated Communications, and Intel.  Tabor 
Communications -- publisher of HPCwire and GridToday -- is the event's 
Premier Media Sponsor.  Other media sponsors are ClusterWorld and Linux 
magazines.  Research sponsors include Argonne National Laboratory, the 
Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California, 
the GRIDS Center (part of the NSF Middleware Initiative) and Cal IT(2).

The Globus Toolkit's open source, open architecture software and services 
have been deployed broadly worldwide for both science and industry, 
attracting a strong community of contributors and users.  The New York 
Times has called Globus Toolkit "the de facto standard for Grid computing" 
and praised the "far-sighted simplicity" of its Grid services 
architecture.  MIT Technology Review named it one of Ten Technologies That 
Will Change the World.  Other recent acclaim for the toolkit includes an 
R&D 100 Award and the Federal Laboratory Consortium Award for Excellence in 
Tech Transfer.

___________________________________________________________________________

Media contact:  Tom Garritano, garritano at mcs.anl.gov, 630-252-7641
For information about the Globus Toolkit:  http://www.globus.org




mary fritsch . futures lab . mcs . argonne national lab . 630 252 5297