The Gartner Research published a special report on Cloud Computing. A podcast is also available for free.
Big names involved in the cloud computing business are represented in the on-going Structure 08 event. Recording of talks and interviews from this event are available.
During the OGF23 event, the Open Grid Forum (OGF) updated its mission. The original statements since the OGF and EGA merge was:
The Open Grid Forum accelerates grid adoption to enable business value and scientific discovery by providing an open forum for grid innovation and developing open standards for grid software interoperability. OGF provides an open forum that brings together key individuals and organizations from the grid community to align requirements; identify and remove barriers; workshop best practices that will expedite grid adoption. As an open standards organization, OGF collaborates extensively with other standards development organizations to align with existing industry standards and develop new specifications to enable grid software interoperability.
The new mission does not mention the term Grid anymore. Since the Grid is often identified with a type of infrastructure and the related enabling middleware and since new terms are emerging for the support of the same functionality (e.g., Cloud), the OGF moves the focus to the final goal which is the support of applied distributed computing. Years back, Grid was considered the new way to do distributed computing. It was the new name for the “What” and “How”. Today, the Amazon Cloud approach (”Infrastructure as a Service”) enables new approaches, like deploying a batch system on demand (see RightGrid). That’s why probably the OGF decided to refocus the mission statement as follows:
OGF is an open community committed to driving the rapid evolution and adoption of applied distributed computing. Applied Distributed Computing is critical to developing new, innovative and scalable applications and infrastructures that are essential to productivity in the enterprise and within the science community. OGF accomplishes its work through open forums that build the community, explore trends, share best practices and consolidate these best practices into standards.
In the scope of the mission, to be considered also:
Applied distributed computing environments include everything from distributed high performance computing resources (traditional ‘Grids’) to horizontally scaled transactional systems supporting Service Oriented Architectures to Clouds, across all scales and for all application domains.
I recommend also to read the list of FAQ.
During the next September, in the context of the Enterprise Computing Conference (EDOC 2008), there will be the Middleware for Web Services workshop (MWS 2008). This is a good chance to disseminate on-going work and results in research and engineering about WS-related technologies. The deadline is 13 June 2008 27 June 2008.
This year I decided to participate to the National Geographic Photography Contest, Italian Edition. I submitted a photo taken during my trip to India in early 2006. With my great honour, this was selected as a winner in the Persons category. This picture together with winners of the other three categories is published in the September edition of the National Geographic Italy.
29.12.2007: (update) in the beginning of December, the National Geographic published the results of the final phase of the contest where winners from various countries competed for the top-level positions. My picture got a wonderful honorable mention.
An article appeared in the International Herald Tribune talks about the challenge being faced by the Large Hadron Collider and all involved physicists, engineers and scientists in general. The LHC Computing Grid will support the analysis of the data that will be gathered during the experiments to further explore the structure of matter.
I’ve released a new version of bib2html plugin (v.0.7) that includes a number of updates. First of all, I’ve replaced the scriptacolous javascript library with jquery javascript library. I use the toggle function for enabling the user-driven visualization of the bibtex code for a given entry. I have also isolated the main HTML code into a template file that enables easier customization. Finally, I’ve added a little bit of formatting to the bibtex code in order to show better (thanks to Cristiana). Last but not least, now bib2html properly integrates with the new Wordpress Plugin section. I still have a number of modifications to be made.
A new release of bib2html is available (r.0.5). This contains only a bug fix about the deny option that was discovered and solved a few weeks ago.
My working environment presents challenging conditions as regards the capability of managing the working time, the identification of requirements and the definition of priorities. Moreover, there are frequent external requests trying to catch your attention in order to direct you towards other tasks. These characteristics are typical in the research area (not specific to my conditions) and they are even more emphasized by the fact that I’m involved in many activities.
From time to time, I wonder about best practice, tools and any other supporting process that can help in supporting my work. Traditional project management processes are too rigid for this environment, simple to do list are “too simple” because they become soon overcrowded and almost useless. Around a year ago I discovered SCRUM, a lightweight process that can manage and control software and product development. There are two main documents that I would recommend to read: SCRUM Primer and The SCRUM Software Development Process for Small Teams.
SCRUM requires simple concepts easy to learn for all members of a team. There are also tools to support this process, some of them is also free (e.g., ScrumWorks Basic). At the moment, I’m trying to introduce SCRUM in GridICE, a software project where I’m involved since its beginning (2003) and composed by 9 persons, almost all of them part-time involved.
The idea is to adapt SCRUM to the specific context of GridICE, avoiding the need to introduce a new management tool to install and manage, but to exploit the capabilities of the GForge portal. A SCRUM-specific plug in would be a must, nevertheless we try to identify the best way to use trackers and tasks functionalities. We’ll see the advantages in the next months.
A new release of bib2html is available (r.0.4). The available new feature is the possibility of selecting only one citation based on the bibtex key. The source code is now available in this SVN repository.