Folks, This mail was sent to me privately, but I feel it highlights one of several issues we all already know form part of our work. We have a number of options wrt how to address this issue, and we need to choose one. Talk to you on Thursday. Begin forwarded message:
From: Tony DiCenzo <tony.dicenzo@oracle.com> Date: 8 August 2006 17:01:11 GMT-07:00 To: David Snelling <David.Snelling@uk.fujitsu.com> Cc: Kantarjiev CHRISTOPHER A <CHRIS.KANTARJIEV@oracle.com> Subject: Re: Labeling OGSA as a 'flag ship architecture Reply-To: tony.dicenzo@oracle.com
Dave,
Chris Kantarjiev shared the minutes of the TSG meeting with me. I'm delighted that it's moving forward in a timely fashion and I think you are making good decisions in guiding it.
But I do have one concern, that being the idea of labeling OGSA a 'flag ship architecture'.
It's clear OGSA is a primary architecture and a major reason many members are involved. No issue with that. There are many former members of BOTh EGA and GGF who are interested in where OGSA goes, and who are interested in understanding the relationship of OGSA to the EGA reference Model and to emerging standard. But there are those who are not employing it and would have major issues with it being designated as the 'Flag ship' architecture, even if a few other architectures were focused on. To say the emotions run hot is an understatement.
I think you need to know that at the very first meeting of the GGF and EGA to discuss the merger Mark pre-empted a major issue when he said 'We're aware that EGA doesn't OGSA thrown down it's throat, and we will take that off the table'. He went on to say that he believed there were GGF members as well as EGA members who were not OGSA supporters. They were not opposed to OGSA per se, but not focused on adopting it as their architecture.
The understanding inherent in the merger agreement, while not written down specifically, is that OGSA would not be positioned as the flag ship architecture. Doing so would be a slap in the face and a total move away from the merger agreement.
I'm sure you will discuss this with Mark. I encourage you to do so. You might also want to discuss it with John Tollefsrud, Jay Unger, and others who were on the merger team. I also encourage you to help the TSG understand that OGSA can remain a primary architectural focus without drawing a line in the sand that I expect would lead to members not renewing their memberships.
I strongly recommend moving away from that idea.
Very best regards,
Tony _______________________________________ Tony Di Cenzo Director Standards Strategy and Architecture Corporate Architecture Group Oracle 500 Oracle Parkway Mailstop 5op312 Redwood Shores, CA 94065 Tel: 650.506.2090 Cell: 650.773.6046 Fax: 650.506.7218 Email: Tony.DiCenzo@Oracle.com <mailto:Tony.DiCenzo@Oracle.com>
-----Original Message----- From: David Snelling [mailto:David.Snelling@uk.fujitsu.com] Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2006 5:41 AM To: David Snelling; Steven Newhouse; Andre Merzky; Geoffrey Fox; Robert Fogel; Hanoch Eiron; Ian Foster; Chris Kantarjiev; Tom Maguire; Joel Replogle Subject: Welcome to the OGF Technical Strategy Committee
Folks,
Welcome aboard. This is the first official communication of the Open Grid Forum's Technical Strategy Committee.
Introductions:
Chair: David Snelling Standards Representative: Steven Newhouse Operations Representative: Andre Merzky Research Representative: Geoffery Fox Enterprise Representative: Robert Fogel Marketing Representative: Hanoch Eiron At large 1: Ian Foster At large 2: Chris Kantarjiev At large 3: Tom Maguire Facilitator: Joel Replogle
Where we stand:
This membership still needs official sanction by the board, but we need to start work and will assume that things will proceed without complications. Joel, will be creating a mailing list for us to use. This list will be closed for both posting and receiving, but will be archived publicly. If anybody has a problem with this strategy, please let me know.
What we need to do:
There are a lot of tasks we could pick up, but one is rather urgent and important. We need to create a Draft Technical Strategy and Roadmap for the Open Grid Forum. This document would be for both internal steering and external consumption. As these two uses are somewhat at odds, I would propose that we aim to write the steering document and let our marketing machine filter it for public consumption.
Draft Technical Strategy and Roadmap Document:
There are several bits of background information associated with the development of this document. The first is a task (called simply the "Standards Project") initiated by Mark and a number of the GFAC to attempt to understand where we are with respect to a number of issues and questions surrounding the Open Grid Services Architecture, the convergence of Standards for stateful Web Services, etc.. The latest draft of this plan is attached. It includes a number of actions, one of which is the inauguration of this committee.
One of the other steps in the Standards Project was executing a survey of the community on these issues. I have attached the slide deck containing the main outputs. The key points I pull from these results are the following:
- The community is willing to support a Flag Ship Architecture, as long as we remain open to other ideas. - OGSA is well aligned with what people consider the top priority specifications.
Note these conclusions are not without controversy, but to quote Jay Unger, "It is only a strategy if half the people disagree!"
In the Standards Council F2F a week and a half ago, we discussed the need for a Technical Strategy and Roadmap Document, so some people have already had input in to the attached outline. Also, the week before that the OGF management committee met with the OGSA leadership to refine these ideas.
Document Outline (Very Drafty):
From Wikipedia: A strategy is a long term plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal, as differentiated from tactics or immediate actions with resources at hand.
Therefore, we (OGF) need a goal before we can get started. As a result of discussions in the above meetings, we developed a simple goal, as it turns out modeled on Kennedy's Moon Shot speech. The Goal I propose we start with is therefore:
The Open Grid Froum should commit all its available resources to the goal, that before this decade is out, commercial and academic organizations will build real operational grids using OGSA based components!
The attached HTML file contains some more content and a draft outline of the proposed strategy document. [NB: This HTML file was exported from a mind mapping tool I am using and would recommend to you all, see freemind.sourceforge.net].
I will need lots of help turning this outline into a document.
Other useful links:
The OGSA current roadmap document: https://forge.gridforum.org/sf/go/ doc13558?nav=1 The living charter web site (a kind of roadmap for the whole organization): Joel will tell us where this is, as I can't find the link any more.
Meetings:
I would like to avoid F2F meetings as much as possible, but we have work to do and it is holiday season all the way up to GridWorld. Therefore, the first telecon will be at 14:00 GMT (15:00 BST; 10:00 EDT) on Thursday September 17th. The pass code is 2051278 and a list of numbers is attached. I am on holiday for the next week and a half, but will occasionally look at email.
Actions:
Joel: Set up the mailing list based on this email. All: Come up to speed on the content of this mail and its attachments. Anyone: Volunteer to wordsmith sections of the document. Joel: Post the link to all living charter information. All: Dial in to the call on September 17th.
Anyway, sorry for the initial workload, I hope it will tail off a bit once we get started.
--
Take care:
Dr. David Snelling < David . Snelling . UK . Fujitsu . com > Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe Hayes Park Central Hayes End Road Hayes, Middlesex UB4 8FE
+44-208-606-4649 (Office) +44-208-606-4539 (Fax) +44-7768-807526 (Mobile)
-- Take care: Dr. David Snelling < David . Snelling . UK . Fujitsu . com > Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe Hayes Park Central Hayes End Road Hayes, Middlesex UB4 8FE +44-208-606-4649 (Office) +44-208-606-4539 (Fax) +44-7768-807526 (Mobile)