What has changed?
In a sense, little has fundamentally changed. The problems that the OGF and its community care about solving, many of the technologies that enable these solutions and the issues that inhibit adoption remain the focus of OGF's work. What has changed is the broader context around grid computing. Over the course of the last ten years, many new technologies and contexts have emerged that are closely related to the OGF's work and that form key components of many distributed solutions that the OGF community deploys, for example SOA, web-services, virtualization, multi-core processors, cloud computing etc. Its very important that OGF and its work is clearly positioned within this broader context of applied distributed computing and that this is regularly reviewed to take account of the ever changing technology landscape.
Is OGF shifting away from grids?
OGF's work on applied distributed computing has always been about enabling applications or services to take advantage of the network to scale and achieve resilience, and to support collaboration. This will not change. These remain the goals for many organizations and individuals, whether they choose to call them "Grid" or not. What has changed is the landscape, both in terms of technology and in terms of market dynamics. OGF is positioning itself so that its place within the applied distributed computing landscape is clear and not overly tied to any particular fashion or trend.
Why are the changes happening now and are the processes or structure of the organization also changing?
As grid related technologies and the broader field have evolved, and as the economic climate has changed, a number of the organizational members have reached a point where they consider membership of the OGF to either unaffordable or unrewarding. This is in no way a reflection on the health of the OGF community nor the quality and relevance of its output, both of which are very healthy. Rather it is a reflection of the changing business priorities and economic situations of some organizations. This shift in membership, and the associated changes in the resources they contribute, impacts a number of areas within OGF and has led the board to charter a Tiger Team to review the structure, financing and focus of the organization.
The Board is currently in the process of reviewing the Tiger Team's overall recommendations. It has accepted the team's recommendations with regards to OGF's mission and wanted to take the opportunity to release the updated document while the community is gathered in Barcelona at OGF 23.
The core processes of the organization (3 events per year, the use of the OGF website/GridForge for collaboration and communication, chartered group work, the document series, etc) will not change and we expect the work of our community to continue unabated. However the tiger team has reviewed the structure of the organization and made recommendations to the board which are currently under review by community leadership for refinement. Announcements of any modifications to the organizational structure will be forthcoming at a later date.
Is OGF changing its name?
No. Open Grid Forum will remain the legal name of the organization. We are making a decision to adopt OGF as our brand. This branding decision is analogous to the move made many years ago by International Business Machines to change its brand to IBM. There are dozens of other examples of organizations that have made this type of change as their businesses and markets evolved. This technique is often employed to effectively decouple the organization from any preconceptions that may be conveyed by the original name, allowing the organization to communicate more effectively externally and to avoid being pigeon holed.
What are the next steps?
As a starting point, OGF will reflect the refined mission on its website and in its marketing materials. OGF will use the refined mission as a lens to evaluate its technical direction and priorities. Current community activities will continue as planned and the communication about the outcomes of those activities will also continue. Additional activities (BoFs, workshops, etc.) are already being held to explore environments and technologies within the scope of applied distributed computing to broaden the reach of OGF. This exploration will require a strengthening of existing, as well as the development of new partnerships and liaison relationships with organizations that have expertise in these areas.
How will OGF ensure it has the expertise to address all aspects of its mission?
As noted above OGF will use the revised mission as a lens through which to evaluate all its activities. Those areas where we have not been active will be targeted for the creation of BOF's at subsequent events. OGF will actively recruit experts not currently active in the community and seek the assistance of partner organizations in any areas that a broadening of OGF's expertise is required.
Recently for example, at OGF 21, the first BOF on Cloud Computing was held. That BOF was followed up by workshops at OGF 22 and 23. Through these workshops and subsequent activities, we seek to build expertise within the community. In the near term we hope to establish a research group in which those with an interest in cloud computing can collaborate in determining best practices.
What is "applied distributed computing"?
Applied distributed computing, within the context of the OGF, is used to capture the use of distributed computing to solve some problem or deliver some value, rather than fundamental research into distributed systems per se. Distributed systems include any systems where the software (applications and services) and/or platform (compute or storage resources) are disaggregated and distributed on one or more networks (LAN or WAN). Examples include, but are not necessarily limited to Grids, SOA, Web Services and client/server.
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