In the latest EGEE newsletter, we ran across this question on an informal survey of people attending the computing conference in Barcelona: “If you had a magic wand, where would grids be in 5-10 years?”

Here’s a very abbreviated version of some of their responses:

“Where do I think grids will be? Disappeared! Like any computer technology they rely on the components, business model, environmental constraints, which they are built upon. In the future I think we’ll see full virtualization of computing resources. The Grid has fulfilled its historical cycle. As it is today, it is not offering the best model for science and business in general, but this is with exceptions. This may be one of the last grid parties we will have. In the future we’ll see virtualization of all computer services.”

— Fabrizio Gagliardi, Microsoft Research

“Grids or e-Infrastructure will become the underpinning on which all research will be done, whether or not it is high-throughput computing, high performance computing, remote instrumentation, visualization, all of these things should be available quickly and easily to the researcher communities.”
— David Wallom, Oxford e-Research Centre

“I think grids will still be there – I hope they will still be there – but I think they will look quite a bit different. What we are already discussing at this and other conferences is how to incorporate new technologies and new ways of using computing resources in the grid. And I think two areas where things will look very different is at the infrastructure level where I think we will see a lot of virtualization and cloud-linked technologies and at the user level where we will see things like Hadoop and other service platforms and application platforms to simplify particular types of calculations.”

— Cal Loomis, EGEE applications, CNRS

“I hope they will have integrated in some of the big European facilities like ILL – Institut Laue-Langevin, ESRF – European Synchrotron Radiation Facility and ITER – the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor. If they are integrated in to facilities like that, and aiding the scientists using them, then I think that will be a big achievement.”

— John Gordon, STFC-Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

“For the future? I would like to see the grid really being what it is suppose to be: a computing service for research. One where people can hook up, submit their jobs, do calculations, universities can contribute in terms of computing power and it is free for everyone.”

— Stefan Lüders, CERN IT security officer

For more, see the part of the EGEE newsletter titled The past and future of grids in four questions