ETSI Grid Starter GroupBT Perspective on Grid and Standardisation

Mike Fisher

BT Group

24 May 2006

The digital networked economy

Where transactions are instant and secure, data is stored safely and collaboration is easy

• Connectivity and convergence are driving economies on a global basis

• Bringing information and applications to the point of use

• Communication and collaboration is key

• The real benefits derive from IT that is connected

• We call this networked IT

Changing landscape

• Need to respond to dynamic business conditions– Accelerate concept to market– Adapt to intermittent availability

• Heterogeneity– Fixed/mobile, core/metro/access, multicarrier, terminal device,

operating systems, SAN, NAS, file systems, …

• Commoditisation– of servers, storage, network– infrastructure becoming ubiquitous and invisible

• Virtualisation, abstraction, automation• Markets shifting from products to services

Grid Computing - the BT view

• Grid is NOT about– providing supercomputer performance for large parallel

applications– simple provision of network bandwidth or dark fibre

• Grid is about– creation of a virtualised infrastructure across all ICT resources– enabling customers to collaborate internally and externally– managing ICT complexity– extending existing VPN business in a natural next step

Leased Lines VPNIP Grid

Single UseGrid

Multi-purpose

Status of current Grid deployments

• Academic, non-commercial Grids– Single purpose, bespoke deployments– Closed user groups– Motivated by cooperation– Relies on highly skilled people to deploy and operate

• Commercial Grids– Sector-specific applications– Intra-enterprise– Motivated by efficiency

• Both types are limited– just first steps, despite the hype!

Next Generation Grids

• Multiple applications and resources– Diverse and general purpose infrastructure– Consistent architecture

• Multiple independent users and providers– Users compose applications from wide range of services– Providers support different customers simultaneously

• Commercial focus– Sustainable business models– Well-defined SLAs, including rewards and penalties– Security and reliability much more prominent

NextGRID

• European collaborative project– defining the architecture for the Next Generation Grid

• Primary architectural principles– Minimal Grid Infrastructure

• ubiquitous basis for interoperability

– Service Composition• small number of patterns

– Dynamics driven by Service Level Agreements

• Strong standards focus

http://www.nextgrid.org

Relevance to Telecommunications

• Intra-Grids are limited by the LAN– Limits market potential

• Grid interconnection highlights the role of the network– regional, national, global– early adopters using private circuits - not scalable

• Three main areas – Evolution of networks and services to support new

requirements– Use of Grid technologies in internal operations (e.g. OSS)– Managed Grid services as a customer offeringTelco Community Group, GGF14 (Chicago)

Enterprise Grids today

• Inside datacentre, and behind firewall

• Virtual use of own IT assets– opens up under-used ICT assets– improves TCO, ROI and

Application performance

BUT• This intra-enterprise GRID model is

limited– Pool of virtualised assets is

restricted by firewall– Does not support Inter-

Enterprise usage

• BT is focussing on a managed Grid solution…..

WANS LANS

ENTERPRISE

Pre-GRIDIT asset usage 10-15 %

WANSLANS

ENTERPRISE

Post-GRIDIT asset usage 70-75 %

GRID EngineVirtualised

assets

Virtual Private Grid

• End-to-end applications

• Network-centric service

• Multi-site enterprises• Inter-enterprise

collaboration

• Managed

GRID Engine

WANSLANS

ENTERPRISE

Virtualised assets

WANSLANS

ENTERPRISE

GRID Engine

Missing pieces

• Interoperability essential for an open services market– important role for standards (reliable, stable, …)

• Many competing and incompatible standards activities, proprietary solutions

• Very few stable standards – just WS-I Basic– plus basic Security

• Most systems (science or enterprise) need more…– Naming, Addressing, Service description, Security,

Transactions, Persistent resources, Versioning and Lifecycle, Reliable Messaging/Notification, Orchestration, Workflow, …

• Convergence of standards is encouraging but…– …effective standardisation will take time

Conclusion

• Grid has great potential in the Digital Networked Economy– natural extension of NGN

• Interoperability essential– network effects increase the value

• Basic functionality exists or developing rapidly– sufficient level of sophistication will soon be available

• Need to build broad consensus– move the focus of competition– eliminate unnecessary barriers

• Start to address real research challenges– NESSI Strategic Research Agenda– NGG3 (Service Oriented Knowledge Utility)