Dear All,

I hope that all of you have enjoyed your new year holidays and getting back to
your work on research, development, and/or support of Grid computing
technologies and its applications.

Let me begin the first informal newsletter of Grid Infoware Centre
(gridcomputing.com) and the Gridbus project (www.gridbus.org), by wishing you
all a happy, prosperous, and successful new year.

1. Efforts in Grid Computing, both in academia and industry, continue to grow
rapidly world-wide. For example, during my visit to India from Dec. 10-Jan 5,
I have come across a several new developments. Indian companies such as Infosys
(www.infosys.com) and Satyam (www.satyam.com) have started Grid projects and
actively engaged in the development of Grid technologies or their utilisation in
driving scientific and business applications.

2. Infosys has developed Grid-based data centre management tools whereas Satyam
has developed Bioinformatics applications. I heard that Satyam has applied
Desktop Grids to bio applications in Pharmaceutical/Drug Discovery applications.
In fact, I have seen a demonstration of Micro-Array Processing (which helps in
early detection of Breast cancer) Application on a Desktop Grid constructed
using our Alchemi (www.alchemi.net) Framework. Many other multinational
companies in India have started active programs in Grid computing. For example,
both HP and Oracle have been developing some key Grid technologies needed for
taking their current products to the next level. In addition, Oracle, Dell,
Intel, EMC have announced their joint project, called MegaGrid. All these
developments sounds exciting and the future for Grids seem brighter!

3. The Grid Infoware has been updated to include pointers to some recent
developments. For example, a link to CoreGrid Network of Excellence funded by
European Union is provided. Here in Australia, Government has initiated Grid
applications oriented effort, called eResearch
http://www.arc.gov.au/grant_programs/special_initiatives.htm
which is basically Australian version of eScience program. The government has
allocated some millions of dollars for this special research initiative.
Back in India, Govt. of India (Ministry of Communication and Information
Technologies) had funded C-DAC (a project) to develop National Grid
Infrastructure that connects severals PARAM supercomputers deployed in several
primer institutes and universities.

4. During my trip to India, I had an opportunity to visit Anna University's
Madras Institute of Technologies (MIT) who partnered with C-DAC on develop grid
technologies and applications. They are also making Grids interfaces available
in Indian languages. One of their effort was the development of Tamil (a
language spoken in South India state - Tamil Nadu) interface for our Grid Market
Directory (GMD) user-interface. They also developed a Linux shell UI in Tamil.
You can enjoy appearance of GMD in Tamil language by growing some of its
snapshots in Tamil:
http://www.gridbus.org/gmd/tamil/
This is probably the world's first Grid technology with non-English language
interface--thanks to MIT@Anna in India. Such efforts of important for taking
'Grids to common man! This reminds me of an article that appeared in "The Hindu
Business Line" newspaper article on `Grid computing offers much for common man':
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/01/04/stories/2005010402030500.htm

5. I would like to share pointers to recent technical reports released by the
Gridbus Project. They include:
-------------------------------------------------
* An Economy-based Algorithm for Scheduling Data-Intensive Applications on
Global Grids
* Grid Federation: An Economy Based Distributed Resource Management System for
large-scale Resource Coupling
* A taxonomy of market-based resource management systems for utility-driven
cluster computing
* Constructing A Grid Simulation with Differentiated Network Service Using
GridSim
Reports can be downloaded from: http://www.gridbus.org/tech_reports.html
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6. Last but not least, I would like to share pointers to recent honours or
masters minor theses submitted by two of my students:
----------
Decentralized Media Streaming Infrastructure (DeMSI): A Peer-to-Peer Content
Delivery Network (Master of IT - Minor Thesis)
* Economy-Based Data Replication Broker Policies in Data Grids (BSc Honours
Thesis)
Thesis can also be downloaded from: http://www.gridbus.org/tech_reports.html
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That is all for now.

Thanks for your attention and wish you all a happy, prosperous, and successful
days for the rest of this year.

Cheers from the Editor of this informal Grid newsletter!
Raj
PS: This message can be shared freely with all!