[CAnet - news] Commercialization Opportunities of CyberInfrastructure

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 [Although the focus of cyber-infrastructure (grids, web services, SAO,
workflow) to date has been on research and academic applications such as the
recently announce Teragrid expansion, and programs like LOOKING Optiputer,
and NEESgrid, the commercial potential for cyber-infrastructure applications
is very significant and very immediate.  Perhaps the biggest commercial
opportunity for cyber-infrastructure is in process control applications such
as bandwidth and network management,  sensor network configuration and
management, instrumentation control and management in oil and gas, pulp and
paper, manufacturing , etc

A good example is Nortel's recently announced DRAC product (Dynamic Resource
Allocation Controller, pronounced d-rack), www.nortel.com/drac, which is a
layer of Network Services with which a user or an application can request a
multi-domain network to adapt to high bandwidth applications.  Because DRAC
is built with service oriented architecture framework it can be easily be
linked, or more importantly, integrated with workflow tools such as BPEL to
other web service applications.

Recently for example Nortel demonstrated DRAC interacting with CANARIE's
UCLP tools developed at University Quebec a Montreal
(http://www.canarie.ca/canet4/uclp/index.html) which integrated the
sophisticated inter-domain bandwidth management features DRAC with UCLP's
lower layer condominium configuration and provisioning capability.  Any
application that is also a web service enabled could also be linked in
automatically with DRAC using workflow tools.

Another sign of the developing commercial significance of
cyber-infrastructure is the recent venture capital funding of which isthe
leading provider of commercial software and professional services for open
source Globus software used in many cyber-infrastructure applications -
www.univa.com

CANARIE is working with a number of industrial partners such as Nortel, IBM,
MacDonald Detweiler, etc and research organization such as Canada Light
Source, Neptune etc to extend cyber infrastructure in a variety of other
process control areas such as remote control of undersea HDTV cameras,
remote control and access to EPICS instrument controllers and databases,
etc.  For more details please see
http://www.canarie.ca/funding/ciip/index.html.

I think a good analysis of the potential of the commercial of
cyber-infrastructure was reported recently in ACM Queue (thanks to Dave
Macneil):

SOA is a "...major technology trend that is driving many related
efforts-namely, the transformation from vertically integrated silos to
horizontally integrated, service- oriented systems..."

"...vertical decoupling means that we standardize interfaces among
application components, workload management systems, and physical resources
so that different components can be assembled dynamically to meet
application needs. Horizontal integration means that we adopt uniform
management interfaces so that large numbers of resources, distributed over
what used to be distinct silos, can be allocated, used, monitored, and
managed in a common and automated manner, improving utilization 
and reducing operations costs..."

(Describing the Elephant: The Different Faces of IT as Service 
http://www.acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=printer_friendly&pid=319
&page=1)

I think the commercial importance of cyber-infrastructure is also evidenced
by the significant funding that many countries are placing on
cyber-infrastructure (aka eScience, eResearch, e-infrastructure,
i-infrastructure) such as the recently announced program at NSF, the
Australian BAA program and the UK eScience and eResearch initiatives. --BSA]





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These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those  of the CANARIE board or management.  






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