European Union Framework Programme: 

FP6, Priority: IST, Objective:

Advanced GridTechnologies, Systems, and Services

Sonja Klingert

Campus 3, 76646 Bruchsal, Germany

email:sonja.klingert(at)i-u.de

GridEcon will provide an infrastructure that allows end-users not only to consume but also to sell services and resources on the Grid, therefore, creating a new economy in which all end-users can actively participate. The GridEcon consortium envisages the Grid as being more than just a large distributed system, which provides virtualized services to its users and enables computing on demand on a best-effort basis at zero cost (free resources). Instead, GridEcon expects the Grid to offer services that span many economically independent enterprises that make independent decisions, forming a real economy. The Grid is expected to evolve into an infrastructure, allowing the resolving of differences in service preferences of participants and the expression of their utility through interaction in an economy (in markets). This economics-aware Grid will create additional value for its participants by fully exploiting the economic value of the resources and providing the basis for developing creative, new business models.

The overall goal of the GridEcon project is to advance the functionality of existing Grid technology with respect to its capability to allow the economics-aware operation of Grid applications. GridEcon will propose the necessary solutions and extensions to this technology so that new Grid business models can be implemented.

Basic information about the project can be found in the following article and presentation:

• J. Altmann, C. Courboubetis, J. Darlington, J. Cohen “GridEcon – The Economic-Enhanced Next-Generation Internet“, GECON 2007, Springer 2007.

• The following presentation provides a good overview of the project objectives.

• Altmann and S. Routzounis, “Economic Modelling for Grid Services”, e-Challenges2006, October 2006;

• D. Quan, “Mapping heavy Communication Workflows onto Grid Resources within SLA Context”, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on High-Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC-06), Munich, Germany, September 2006;

• D. Quan, “Network-Based Resource Allocation for Grid Computing within an SLA Context”, Proceedings of the fifth International Conference on Grid and Cooperative Computing (GCC 2006), Huanan, China, October 2006;

• Routzounis and GD Stamoulis, “An efficient mechanism for auctioning alternative paths”, 2006 workshop on Game Theory for communications and networks, GameNets’06, Pisa, Italy;

• Dramitinos, GD. Stamoulis and C. Courcoubetis, “A Random Walk Model for Studying Allocation Patterns in Auction-based Resource Allocation”, 5th International Workshop on Advanced Internet Charging and QoS Technologies (ICQT 2006), St Malo, France;

• Papaioannou and GD. Stamoulis, “Enforcing Truthful-Rating Equilibria in Electronic Marketplaces”, IEEE ICDCS Workshop on Incentive-Based Computing, Lisbon, Portugal;

• Papaioannou, GD. Stamoulis and V. Bintzios, “An effective approach for accurate estimation of trust of distant information sources in the Semantic Web”, IEEE ICPS Security, Privacy and Trust in Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, 2006, Lyon, France;

• Courcoubetis, S. Sources, and RR. Weber, “Pricing Resources on Demand”, 1st IEEE International Workshop on Bandwidth on Demand (BoD 2006), In conjunction with IEEE Globecom 2006, San Francisco, California;

• Th. G. Papaioannou and G. D. Stamoulis. Reputation-based Estimation of Individual Performance in Grids. Submitted to Grid 2007 Workshop on Economic Models and Algorithms for Grid Systems, Austin, Texas, September 2007;

• M. Quan and J. Altman, “Mapping a Group of Jobs in the Error Recovery of the Grid-based Workflow within SLA Context”, Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Advanced Networking and Computing, Niagara Falls, Canada, May 2007;

• J. Altmann, A. A. B. Mohammed, and M. Ion, “Taxonomy of Grid Business Models”, Proceedings of Grid Economics and Business Models, Rennes, France, August 2007.

The specific objectives that will be pursued are:

• Analyze economic issues that arise in the current and emerging Grid business models by using representative scenarios of Grid computing in different potential market sectors (general public, SME, large enterprises, and academia)

• Analyze new paradigms of revenue generation, accounting, and settlement in the utility services model

• Design markets for services at various levels of service provisioning, from basic utility services to web services where buyers can express preferences for quality and reliability

• Validate these findings by implementing specific components, that allow the economics-aware operation of Grid applications, and by integrating them with existing Grid middle-ware

This will lead the definition and development of technology for Grid economics and Grid business models.

The long-term benefits of GridEcon technology to the end-user include:

• The ability to generate income by selling services or sharing resources, and the capability of choosing the appropriate level of service by paying the appropriate price

• A reduced participation risk by deploying well-defined Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that are appropriate for the Grid environment

• The capability to collaborate in an environment that extends across individual organization boundaries without losing control of his own resources, where there is an economically fair sharing of costs and generated value

• International University Bruchsal (Germany)

• Athens University of Economics and Business (Greece)

• Ernst & Young, MSC B.V. (Belgium)

• Imperial College London (UK)

• LogicaCMG B.V. (Netherlands)

• GigaSpaces (Israel)

• Athens Technology Center S.A. (Greece)

• The 451 Group (UK)