The Role of Workflow in Next Generation Business Oriented Grids: Two Different Approaches Leading to a Unified Vision

The Grid is currently living an exciting evolution step to turn from a niche technological infrastructure to a widely used Business environment. To this aim, Workflows are playing an important role acting as the link towards the well-established Business Process Management environment. A number of Grid projects worldwide are trying to implement this link and create the Business Grid but no definitive proposal has been provided yet. In this paper, we analyse two European Grid projects, Akogrimo and NextGRID, both investigating the Business usage of Grid from architectural perspectives but each one adopting a different approach in proposing solutions. The comparative analysis we report provides interesting elements to define a unified vision of the Next Generation Grids where Workflow Models, Languages, and Engines constitute a fundamental building block. Understanding and sharing this vision can be the first step to get to an effective architectural design for Business Grids.