Architecture for Service Request Driven Solution Delivery Using Grid Systems

Today grid infrastructures are increasingly required to handle complex service requests requiring configuration and deployment of customized solutions. Existing tools and technologies are labor intensive and result in inefficient and wasteful use of both human and IT resources. In this paper, we describe Harmony II - an architecture for delivering customized solutions using an approach that is policy driven and is amenable to a high degree of automation. Our approach is modular, which facilitates customization using building blocks of IT resources. Lower level raw IT resources are virtualized allowing flexible and policy-based resource sharing. Flexible resource sharing reduces wasteful use of expensive IT resources and allows business goals to dictate how the resources are to be used. Cost savings in IT management are achieved not only by the automation in service delivery, but also by the novel use of building blocks and solution templates