Globus Takes Off in Europe

Google analytics has been providing some nice perspectives on Globus downloads. It is an inspiring reminder of how small a planet we live on: every continent except Antartica shows significant activity.

One thing that I find gratifying is how the release of Globus Toolkit version 4 (GT4) has spurred rapid growth in the Globus user and developer communities in Europe.

Major new deployments have emerged, such as D-Grid, and long-time deployments such as the U.K. National Grid Service and the LHC Computing Grid use many Globus components. There are also numerous neat applications: things like the Gridcast video delivery (for the BBC) and a weather forecasting site at the University of Naples. In the European Union's new BEinGRID project, focused on commercial applications of grid technology, five out of 18 pilots are based on GT4. In addition, OMII Europe has identified Globus as a target platform.

In addition, we see contributions not only from long-time Globus community members such as NeSC and EPCC (source of the OGSA-DAI data access and integration software) but also from new participants via the "dev.globus" incubation process. One nice example is the GridWay scheduler system from Madrid.

There are still some Europeans who think parochially of Globus as "U.S." software, but (if I may make a bad pun) more and more seem to realize it is "us" software, just like Linux, Apache, and other open source systems: an international community effort to develop and support the software, experiences, and operational procedures needed to create Grid systems and applications.

As you can tell, I love to hear about interesting Globus deployments, applications, and research. Please drop me a line to tell me about what you are doing (whether in Europe or otherwise!).