Abstract :
The Grid seems to be everywhere, with announcements appearing almost every day of Grid products, sales, and deployments from major vendors. However, in spite of the popularity of the term, there is often confusion as to what the Grid is and what problems it solves. Is there any "there there" or is it all just marketing hype? In this talk, I will address these questions, describing what the Grid is, what problems it solves, and what technology has been developed to build Grid infrastructure and create Grid applications. I will review the current status of Grid infrastructure and deployment and give examples of where Grid technology is being used not only to perform current tasks better, but to provide fundamentally new capabilities that are not possible otherwise.
