Dave, The new Enter the Grid as well as Simon Forge's report saying there should be a European Grid Agency have raised the point about where Europe stands relative to the US and Japan in adopting Grids. I could present materials comparing some of the main industries -- autos, aerospace and possibly pharma and finance adoption of Grids in the US, Europe and Japan from 2003-4 to 2010 -- in a talk in the first session on Setting the Scene. I think I am the only one with this type of data. In addition, my interviews bring out some interesting trends in the industries I have interviewed, such as when the main benefits will be gained and when Grid deployment will accelerate or slow. Interestingly, my data suggest that rather than a flattening after the next 3 years of Grid adoption, as assumed in the Forge paper and in the Insight Research estimates of European Grid growth, there would be an acceleration in Grid deployment. This would be linked to Grids growing as SOA s are deployed, Web services use grows, and semantic web technology expands. It is also a result of the fact that many firms believe that they will begin to achieve large economic and time-to-market gains later in this decade. Parenthetically, this also suggests that there is probably less of a need for a European Grid Agency and possibly more usefulness in focusing efforts on standards bodies such as OGF and other initiatives such as EGEE and GCN. So this might be a good opportunity to offer some contrast to other views on where Europe's use of Grids is at the present time and where it is going -- I have obtained forecasts in many of the interviews I have done with end users. Bob Cohen http://www.hoise.com/primeur/07/articles/weekly/AE-PR-03-07-3.html