TERMS OF REFERENCE

Terms of Reference approved during Board#57 (2006-06-22)

ETSI Technical Committee (TC) GRID

TC GRID's initial goal is to address issues associated with the convergence between IT (Information Technology) and Telecommunications, with particular reference to the lack of interoperable GRID solutions in situations which involve contributions from both the IT and Telecom industries. This places the focus on scenarios where connectivity goes beyond the local network. The TC GRID activities have an emphasis on interoperable GRID applications and services based on global standards and the validation tools to support these standards.

The approach is to actively involve and support GRID stakeholders by complementing existing activities. Specifically, TC GRID will address interoperability aspects of end-to-end applications and develop formal test specifications with the aim of assuring interoperability.

The technical scope of TC GRID is broad. It includes, but is not restricted to:

• resource and service access
   

• protocols, middleware
   

• security
   

• service engineering across the full lifecycle

Convergence is viewed in a broad sense including:

·         IT and Telecommunications

·       GRID and Web Services

·         Fixed and mobile communications

·         Ubiquitous services

As a result, stakeholders include:

·         standardisation bodies, fora and organisations

·         a wide range of commercial players (software vendors, integrators, equipment manufacturers, network operators, service providers etc.)

·         academic and research institutes, collaborative projects

TC GRID will not address all the GRID issues identified alone. Networking with existing standardisation bodies and other relevant stakeholders will help to build the consensus necessary to produce technical specifications and reports. This will enable ETSI to propose a roadmap to interoperable ICT GRID standards.

TC GRID has already identified specific collaboration links with:

·         ETSI TC TISPAN http://portal.etsi.org/tispan  , TC MTS and PTCC  service http://portal.etsi.org/ptcc

·         ETSI Plugtests Service http://www.etsi.org/plugtests

·         ITU www.itu.int

·         GGF www.ggf.org  merged with EGA www.gridalliance.org into OGF Open Grid Forum www.ogf.org

·         GGF SCRM-CG group (Standards Development Organizations Collaboration on Networked Resources Management) https://forge.gridforum.org/projects/scrm/ which is coordinating the standardization efforts of:

-          the Global Grid Forum (GGF),

-          the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF),

-          the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS),

-          the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA),

-          the Tele Management Forum (TMF),

-          the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF),

-          the International Telecommunication Union – Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T)

-          and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

• European Commission DG INSFSO F2, F3 units, DG ENTR
   
• NESSI European Technology Platform http://www.nessi-europe.com
   
• IST FP6 GRID Projects:

-          GSCG: The IST FP6 Grid projects Collaboration Task ‘Co-ordination of Standardisation Efforts’ is fostered and managed by the GRID Standards Co-ordination Group, a forum which comprises representatives from all IST FP6 GRID projects and external experts in GRID standardization.

-          UniGrids, CoreGrid, NextGrid, GridCoord, COPRAS

• OMII University of Southampton. http://www.omii.ac.uk  
   

• ICTSB  http://www.ictsb.org/

More formal cooperation agreements will be established with some of these stakeholders.