Dear PC
members,
I've discussed this industry track within the Grid Computing
Now project and we've come up with some thoughts on the general outline of the
event. These seem to be in line with what we discussed on the first
telcon. I'd like to take this further on tomorrow's call,
as I'm sure you will have thoughts to add. I think we need to
agree on an outline at this level quickly so that we can then progress to a
more detailed plan.
1.
Audience. We want to target IT leaders who are potential users of Grid
and related technologies. The aim is to raise awareness of what these
technologies can do for business now, rather than to sell a grand vision
(although that can be there in the background).
2.
Marketing. We believe the industry track needs to be marketed as
a separate component of the main event. We don't mean
this in the way of establishing a separate annual event a la GridWorld,
but the industry track should have a name of its own and people
should be able to register easily for just the days of the industry
track. This target audience is unlikely to be interested in the
other activities of OGF20 (at least, not yet...). E.g. we could call the
track "Grids Mean Business", hosted by OGF & GCN; the registration page
would have "Grids Mean Business" as one option for registration (and this
would register people for the relevant days of OGF20).
(SC) I'm all for doing what we can to help our target
audience register in a simple and straightforward way. Having a
separate name may be one approach, but I'd like to get some more information
on this as the devil is in the details. I don't agree with the comment
regarding the target audience not being interested in other activities at
OGF20. The Enterprise function has launched and continues to expand some
critical activities around requirements gathering, roll-up, and alignment with
standards. I believe they are also planning some enterprise-oriented
workshops at OGF20 discussing grid practices (Best known methods) where
specifications are not yet available. Perhaps Robert Fogel can provide
addition comment here. In other words, let's not jump too quickly to a
model of separation without having more more rounded perspective on the entire
enterprise offering at OGF20.
3. Setting
the scene. We need an opening presentation (or set of
presentations) that give
an introduction to modern computing infrastructures (Virtualisation, SOA
and Web Services, Grid), introducing the key concepts
and their relationships. We should stress that we're not purist about
the meaning of "Grid"'; we use whatever works to solve business
problems.
4. We need a mixture of case studies and
discussion panels, covering issues such as: utility computing; data
centre grids; software as a service (perhaps leading to Grid markets),
collaborative Grids (e.g. supply chains). These should focus on solving
business problems. Ideally the case studies will cover several sectors
so that we can market the event within those sectors.
(SC) The OGF Enterprise function activities should be
comprehended in this point. I probably missed this earlier, but overall,
are we talking about the Enteprise program being a single day with n
parallel tracks or 1-2 tracks spread across 2-3
days.
5. Then we need to cover issues of scaling,
leading to the challenges of truly large-scale resource
managment.
I look forward to
hearing your suggestions and comments.
Best
wishes,
Dave Berry
Technology Lead, Grid Computing
Now!
National e-Science Centre,
15 South College Street
Edinburgh, EH8
9AA
+44 131 651 4039