Future Generation Grids

The CoreGRID Network of Excellence (NoE) project began in September 2004. Two months later, in November 2004, the first CoreGRID Integra­ tion Workshop was held within the framework of the prestigious international Dagstuhl seminars. CoreGRID aims at strengthening and advancing long-term research, knowledge transfer and integration in the area of Grid and Peer-to- Peer technologies. CoreGRID is a Network of Excellence - a new type of project within the European 6th Framework Programme, to ensure progressive evolution and durable integration of the European Grid research community. To achieve this objective, CoreGRID brings together a critical mass of we- established researchers and doctoral students from forty-two institutions that have constructed an ambitious joint programme of activities. Although excellence is a goal to which CoreGRID is committed, durable integration is our main concern. It means that CoreGRID has to carry out activ­ ities to improve the effectiveness of European research in Grid by coordinating and adapting the participants' activities in Grid research, to share resources such as Grid testbeds, to encourage exchange of research staff and students, and to ensure close collaboration and wide dissemination of its results to the international community. Organising CoreGRID Integration Workshops is one of the activities that aims at identifying and promoting durable collaboration between partners involved in the network.

The Internet and the Web continue to have a major impact on society. By allowing us to discover and access information on a global scale, they have created entirely new businesses and brought new meaning to the term surf. In addition, however, we want processing, and increasingly, we want collaborative processing within distributed teams. This need has led to the creation of the Grid - an infrastructure that enables us to share capabilities, and integrate services and resources within and across enterprises.

Future Generation Grids is the second in the CoreGRID series.  This edited volume brings together contributed articles by scientists and researchers in the Grid community in an attempt to draw a clearer picture of the future generation Grids. This book also identifies some of the most challenging problems on the way to achieving the invisible Grid ideas.

Future Generation Grids is written for a professional audience. This book is also suitable for graduate-level students in computer science.