HP's Linesch Chosen as GGF Chair
released 08.10.04
Contact
Steve Crumb
Executive Director, GGF
scrumb@ggf.org
CHICAGO —
The Global Grid Forum (GGF, http://www.ggf.org/ ), has announced the selection of Mark Linesch of HP as the next GGF chair. As vice president for HP's Adaptive Enterprise Program, Mark has worked extensively on grid and next-generation distributed computing architectures and solutions.
In March, Charlie Catlett announced he would be stepping down after spending five years as GGF chair. Numerous candidates from industry, academia, and the research communities were nominated, and from that pool the search committee selected a shortlist of finalists. The GGF governing bodies selected Mark by an overwhelming consensus as the group's next chair.
As GGF chair, Mark will be dedicated full time to GGF activities, working on behalf of the entire community to continue the critical architecture and standards work needed for pervasive grid computing.
"I am honored to be selected to lead this next critical phase of GGF and grid standards development and want to thank Charlie Catlett for his outstanding leadership over the last five years," Linesch said. "Grid computing, based on open industry standards is providing the distributed computing platform for research collaboration, and new scientific discovery throughout the world today. The work of the grid community is also enabling exciting new business opportunities for grid related products and services. This is a great opportunity for research and industry and I am excited to be able to contribute."
"Today GGF is comprised of several vital, collaborating communities," said Catlett. "Over the past several years the science and research community that initially created GGF has been working shoulder to shoulder with not only end-users but also with product developers from industry. This collaboration has been a key to our success, and today products are emerging based on GGF standards and our flagship OGSA architecture, OGSA. Mark's experience in the marketplace and as a technical leader will be vital to strengthening these important collaborations to create solid standards and frameworks."
"The number and quality of candidates we considered spoke volumes about the strength of the GGF Organization and its leadership as the key driver of grid standards over the past five years. Mark's selection comes at a pivotal point for the GGF as it works closer with industry to ensure the standards created are relevant to both the academic & industrial communities," said Ian Baird, Chief Business Architect & VP Marketing of Platform Computing, a member of GGF's Advisory Committee and chair search committee. "Mark's business acumen will be instrumental in further engaging the business community while maintaining the critical support and involvement of the research and academic communities who form the very foundation of the organization."
During Catlett's five years the GGF has grown from a small group of primarily academic researchers to become the preeminent Grid standards body, with more than 50 technical groups and participation from more than 30 countries and 500 organizations worldwide. GGF's flagship architecture, the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA), was developed through the efforts of individuals from 60 companies and 40 research institutions and leverages the work of the Web services community in partnering organizations including DMTF, IETF, OASIS, and W3C. GGF will be gathering for its next meeting Sept. 20-23 in Brussels, Belgium, to hear experiences from numerous grid veterans who have deployed grids within their commercial enterprises.
Global Grid Forum (GGF, http://www.ggf.org/ ) is a globally distributed community of product developers, researchers, technologists, and end-users of Grid technologies, working together to develop best practices and technical standards to create a foundation for Grid computing applications, products and services. Established in 1999, the GGF community is comprised of thousands of participants from 50 countries and over 500 organizations. GGF is supported by over 50 sponsor member companies and over 25 sponsoring research laboratories, programs, and universities.
