While grid technologies enable standardized access to distributed IT resources across the whole organization, SOAs offer the technical framework and the methodical superstructure for this. The second part of this article looks at some practical examples of this. Part 1 explained the basics of the two concepts.
Part 1
The Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Architecture and Software Technology (Fraunhofer FIRST) is involved in a large number of research and industry projects on connecting SOA and grid computing. As a co-founder of the Fraunhofer Grid Alliance (FhGA), Fraunhofer FIRST is one of the key players involved in the establishment of the Fraunhofer Resource Grid (FhRG). This cross-institution grid platform of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft provides extensive IT resources – hardware, data, software, and services – in an SOA.