The global grid and distributed data mining

This paper reports a UK Economic and Social Research Council project that is exploring the use of Grid technologies to manage distributed data and act as a secure infrastructure for the delivery of computing power to distributed teams. The application focus used to test this infrastructure is the analysis of distributed data resources and their use as a source of competitive advantage. This requires the Grid infrastructure to support teams that draw on expertise, data and compute resources in the UK, Australia and China. Early results highlight a number of issues that require further attention if the Grid is to become a pervasive global infrastructure for business. Barriers to adoption include chronic and justifiable concerns over security, however application of existing Grid technologies, such as OGSA-DAI, will also require a shift in the development focus from synchronous data transfers to asynchronous if a robust and efficient infrastructure is to result.