In-Depth

IBM talks ‘Grids’ at developerWorks Live!

• By Jack Vaughan
• May 10, 2002

[May 10, 2002] - So-called Grid computing was one of the new technologies on display at this week’s developerWorks Live! conference for IBM developers in San Francisco. The company seeks to gain the forefront in what it sees as a significant new computing paradigm.

Grids are clusters of servers joined together over the Internet to form persistent environments. IBM has been at work with the British government, through the Office of Science and Technology, to build a wide-spread grid for collaborative scientific research. Open source Linux and middleware protocols provided by the open source Globus.org initiative are part of the Grid plan.

Grid protocols and the Internet allow processing, storage, data and applications to be shared globally, said IBM’s Irving Wladawsky-Berger, vice president, Technology and Strategy for IBM.

Also on display at the IBM developer conference were tools for speeding up Linux-based applications, and a new version of WebSphere.

The Linux tools take the form of a Software Evaluation Kit available on IBM’s web site. It includes Eclipse-based tools supporting Web services and Java, as well as tools and instruction kits for industry-specific Linux development.

WebSphere Application Server Version 5 supports J2EE 1.3., and provides easier integration with ERP and similar apps as it is based on the J2EE Connector Architecture. JMS support is enhanced with this release.

Also new in the WebSphere family is an MQ Event Broker providing publish-and-subscribe middleware functionality. As well, a new WebSphere Business Integration server helps corporations manage customer relationships and supply chains. It is based in part on technology gained with the recent acquisition of CrossWorlds Software.