Almaden Institute

eLiza Abstract: As the Internet continues to evolve in support of dynamic eCommerce over the web, applications on demand, and large-scale multi-organizational collaborative computing, increased challenges are emerging related to satisfying the demand for construction of reliable, scalable, and secure distributed systems. Across internal enterprise IT infrastructures, service provider outsourcing centers and multi-organizational grids, computing is increasingly concerned with the creation, management, and application of dynamic ensembles of resources and services (and people). Depending on context, these ensembles can be small or large, short-lived or long-lived, single institutional or multi-institutional, and homogeneous or heterogeneous. Regardless of these differences, IT infrastructure providers face common requirements as they seek to deliver QoS—whether measured in terms of common security semantics, distributed workflow and resource management, coordinated fail-over, problem determination services, or other metrics—across a collection of resources with heterogeneous and often dynamic characteristics. This presentation discusses the forces leading to creation of an Open Grid Services Architecture, OGSA, describing how Grid mechanisms can be incorporated into a web services framework and applied within commercial computing as a basis for distributed system integration—within and across organizational domains.  Jeffrey M. Nick - Bio Jeff Nick: IBM Fellow, Director, Advanced Systems Architecture jnick@us.ibm.com Jeff is an IBM Fellow and Director of Advanced Systems Architecture working in Poughkeepsie, New York. He is Chief Architect for IBM’s Project eLiza and Grid computing initiative, responsible for distributed systems technical strategy across IBM’s eServer family of computer systems. In this role, Jeff is leading IBM’s efforts in the definition and evolution of the Open Grid Services Architecture, which is a web-services based model for meta-operating system services for commercial grid computing being developed through open collaboration in the Global Grid Forum. Jeff serves as a member of the GGF Steering Committee representing the Architecture Area. He is the technical chairperson for both the IBM Advanced e-Business Customer Council and internal IBM eLiza Systems Design Council, collectively comprised of leading e-Business customers and IBM designers from across the IBM company. The mission of the councils is to create e-Business integrated infrastructure solutions across IBM servers and middleware. In this capacity, Jeff is driving technical initiatives in several strategic areas, such as distributed workload management, clustering technology, cross-platform automation, and eUtility computing. Prior to his current assignment, Jeff was lead architect for the S/390 Z-series platform and also served as the technical leader of the S/390 eBusiness Customer Council. Jeff is widely recognized as the leading technical expert on S/390 Parallel Sysplex. He received an IBM Corporate Award for his contributions to the design and development of the Parallel Sysplex Coupling Facility and Parallel Sysplex data-sharing architecture. More recently, Jeff defined the technical strategy for Linux on the S/390 platform and led the design initiative for Intelligent Resource Director on IBM’s zSeries high-end computer systems. Jeff joined IBM in 1980 as a developer in the S/390 MVS operating system, having graduated Magna Cum Laude from Marist College with a Bachelor of Science degree. During his career at IBM, he has held positions in MVS system design, development, and as a large systems technical specialist focused on continuous availability issues. Jeff has also been the recipient of several IBM Outstanding Innovation Awards. He has reached the 19th-Level IBM Invention Plateau with over 70 filed inventions and holds more than 40 U.S. patents in the field of computer systems technology. Jeff has also published several papers in technical journals and is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology.