At 9 a.m on Sept. 11, the GGF 18 opening keynote is from Daniel Atkins, director of the NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure, entitled "Vision For 21st Century Discovery." Atkins' talk will feature a review of the comprehensive strategic planning process NSF has initiated with regard to its cyberinfrastructure and include highlights of his research on the social and technical architecture of distributed knowledge communities.

That evening, at 6 p.m., the GlobusWORLD opening will feature Ian Foster of Globus Alliance, Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago, who will deliver a keynote entitled, "Globus: State of the Union." Foster will review the year's accomplishments, discuss obstacles encountered and lessons learned, and propose goals that will help set the direction of the Globus community's work in the year ahead.

Rounding out the week's feature presentations are two panels designed to focus on the use and potential of Grid in the enterprise. Patrick Thibodeau, senior editor at Computerworld, will moderate a keynote panel entitled "The Impact of Grid on Business Today" from 9 to 9:45 a.m on Sept. 13. Panelists include: Ian Baird, global general manager of Grid and utility computing at EMC Corp.; Ken King, vice president of Grid computing at IBM; Chris Purpura, vice president of strategic alliances and new ventures at Platform Computing; and Stuart Wells, executive vice president of utility computing at Sun Microsystems. Beyond the hype, these top executives will discuss what is really happening with grid in major enterprises today, and how it is having an impact on the business itself. Topics to be explored include a range of perspectives including data, compute, and utility grids and where companies are really seeing the value.

The closing keynote, at 5:30 p.m on Sept. 13, will feature another top notch panel entitled "Internal Deployments of Grid," moderated by Earl C. Joseph II, IDC program vice president and executive director of the HPC User Forum. The panel will focus on how major Grid technology vendors are taking advantage of the technology inside their own companies. Panelists include: Elwood R. Coslett, director of IT strategic capabilities at Intel; Mike Lowe, director of silicon design engineering at AMD; Bob Sauers, high-availability solutions architect, at HP; and Bob Shimp, vice president of the global technology business unit at Oracle. These top executives all have hands-on responsibility for internal technology at their organizations. They will share their own Grid implementation strategies, what's working, what's not and what's next.

GridWorld, produced in collaboration with the Open Grid Forum (OGF) and GlobusWORLD, is a B2B conference focused on the commercial benefits of Grid computing for enterprise IT strategists worldwide.

GridWorld also brings together the international Grid community for in-depth working sessions on user requirements, best practices and interoperable software standards.