2008-03-18 - Grid Computing: Impact on your Business

Speakers:      
Ian Foster, Arthur Holly Compton Professor of Computer Science at Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago.

Jason Liu, CEO of Univa UD

Presentation Summary:
Recent headlines have touted massive investments by companies such as Google, IBM and Amazon in Cloud computing. High profile acquisitions of virtualization software companies by almost every large infrastructure software company have occurred in the marketplace over the last 18 months.  Global system integrators are actively promoting services around Utility Computing or SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). All of these areas are simply trendier names for Grid Computing and they illustrate the growing market interest in this topic. Hear from Ian Foster, one of the Father's of Grid Computing, about where this technology trend is going and how it will impact your business. Also, hear from Jason Liu, CEO of Univa UD, a VC backed software company headquartered in Chicago that is a leading software provider in this space. Enterprise Virtualization (Grid Computing) is the next major wave in IT infrastructure and it is happening right now. Learn how Virtualization and Grid Computing can be used to achieve dramatic cost reductions, increase workforce productivity, reduce workspace congestion and achieve a greener IT environment. Ian and Jason will discuss the long term prospects of this technology and how it will impact your business in the near term.

Speaker's Biographies: Ian Foster, ranked among the top 3 computer scientists in the world, is the Arthur Holly Compton Professor of Computer Science at Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago. He created the Distributed Systems Lab at both institutions, where he pioneered key Grid concepts, developed de facto standard Grid technologies, and led the development of successful Grid applications. Ian is one of the founders of the international Grid community and established the Global Grid Forum, convened numerous Grid infrastructure projects, and promotes open source Grid software and standards. A renowned researcher, Ian is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the British Computer Society. With Dr. Carl Kesselman, he co-edited The Grid 2: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure (Morgan Kaufmann, 2003).

Jason Liu is the CEO of Univa UD and is a seasoned entrepreneur who has led or co-led four venture backed companies.   Each company has had a successful exit including a public offering and three successful acquisitions (including one by Novell). Jason has raised over $100 million in equity in his lifetime.   Jason holds a MBA from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and a BBA from Washington University.