The last decade has seen a substantial change in the way we perceive and use computing resources and services. A decade ago, it was normal to expect one’s computing needs to be serviced by localised computing platforms and infrastructures. This situation has changed; the change has been caused by, among other factors, the take-up of commodity computer and network components, the result of faster and more capable hardware and increasingly sophisticated software. | 3 The evolution of the Grid David De Roure 1 Mark A. Baker 2 Nicholas R. Jennings 1 and Nigel R. Shadbolt1 1 University of Southampton Southampton United Kingdom 2 University of Portsmouth Portsmouth United Kingdom INTRODUCTION The last decade has seen a substantial change in the way we perceive and use computing resources and services. A decade ago it was normal to expect one s computing needs to be serviced by localised computing platforms and infrastructures. This situation has changed the change has been caused by among other factors the take-up of commodity computer and network components the result of faster and more capable hardware and increasingly sophisticated software. A consequence of these changes has been the capability for effective and efficient utilization of widely distributed resources to fulfil a range of application needs. As soon as computers are interconnected and communicating we have a distributed system and the issues in designing building and deploying distributed computer systems have now been explored over many years. An increasing number of research groups have been working in the field of wide-area distributed computing. These groups have implemented middleware libraries and tools that allow the cooperative use of geographically distributed resources unified to act as a single powerful platform for the execution of Grid Computing - Making the Global Infrastructure a Reality. Edited by F. Berman A. Hey and G. Fox 2003 John Wiley Sons Ltd ISBN 0-470-85319-0 66 DAVID DE ROURE ET AL. a range of parallel and distributed applications. This approach to computing has been known by several names such as metacomputing scalable computing global computing Internet computing and lately as Grid computing. More recently there has been a shift in emphasis. In Reference 1 the Grid problem is defined as Flexible secure coordinated resource sharing among dynamic collections of individuals institutions and resources . This view emphasizes the .
