Globus Toolkit, Version 4.0 (GT4) Released

Leading Grid Vendors, Standards Bodies and Development Community Call GT4 the Most “Enterprise Ready” Version To Date
CHICAGO, May 2 – The Globus Consortium today announced the release of Globus Toolkit, version 4.0(GT4), developed by the Globus Alliance. The Globus Toolkit is an open standards building block for enterprise-level Grid implementations.
GT4 is the most stable, “enterprise ready” version of the Globus Toolkit ever—incorporating the latest web services standards, new security and authorization features, and the collaborative efforts of a global community of open source Grid developers. GT4 can be downloaded at: www.globustoolkit.org".

“Interoperability, flexibility and the freedom to choose the best vendor products and equipment is what enterprise Grid is all about,” said Ian Foster, Board Member with the Globus Consortium. “The leading enterprise Grid vendors and standards bodies are standing behind GT4 as the preferred open source software for enterprise Grids. By building Grids with the Globus Toolkit, and by working with vendors who support the Globus Toolkit—organizations can best position themselves to exploit the full potential of enterprise Grid.”
For nearly a decade, a global community of Grid developers have contributed to Globus Toolkit code, and this latest GT4 release includes all of the necessary tools for building an enterprise Grid.
Key additions to GT4 include:
GT4 complies with the latest Web Services Interoperability Organization (WS-I) web services standards, which provides maximum interoperability between different environments.
GT4 includes initial support for important authorization standards, including Security Markup Language (SAML) and Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML). These provide business with a foundation for building a secure web-services enabled Grid infrastructure.
 GT4 implements the Web Services Resource Framework (WS-RF) and Web Services Notification (WS-N) specifications, which are emerging standards in OASIS backed by major vendors for web services enablement of Grid and resource management systems.
 GT4 features sophisticated authorization and security capabilities—Globus has always been diligent in Grid security, and GT4 is also “enterprise ready” from a security perspective.
"For nearly a decade, major vendors and standards bodies – including the Global Grid Forum (GGF) – have contributed to the open source Globus Toolkit," said Mark Linesch, Chair of the GGF. "The Globus Toolkit has seen terrific success in research, academic and commercial high-performance computing environments. By continuing to align with the latest grid and web services standards, GT4 is poised for broader adoption – particularly in enterprise markets where efficient resource sharing and more effective data integration are becoming increasingly critical."
North Carolina-based MCNC, which tests and deploys advanced networking solutions on its North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN) in partnership with North Carolina universities and state government, recently performed successful "testbed" work on GT4 - with systems set up across the OC48 NCREN backbone. Vendor participants included: Cisco, Gridwise Technologies, IBM, Network Appliance, Red Hat and Sun.

About the Globus Consortium
The Globus Consortium is the world's leading organization championing open source Grid technologies in the enterprise. With the support of industry leaders IBM, Intel, HP, and Sun Microsystems, the Globus Consortium draws together the vast resources of IT industry vendors, enterprise IT groups, and a vital open source developer community to advance use of the Globus Toolkit in the enterprise. The Globus Toolkit is the de facto standard for Grid infrastructure enabling IT managers to view all of their distributed computing resources around the world as a unified virtual datacenter. By giving enterprises access to computing resources as they need it, IT costs can go up and down as business demands. An open Grid infrastructure is
the pre-requisite to fulfilling the promise of utility computing.