Exploring Applicability of Grid Technologies to Net Centric "Edge" Systems

Scientific grids are often characterized by an infrastructure made up of high speed and reliable networks that connect heterogeneous and distributed compute and storage devices. This is in stark contrast to the concept behind the global information grid (GIG). The GIG is an interconnected information transfer infrastructure meant to provide seamless interoperability and information dominance to the war-fighter. This paper explores the applicability of the Web services based grid technologies for monitoring and discovery, workflow, and QoS, to the net centric "edge" applications on the GIG. We discuss the salient features of current grid technologies, along with examples wherever applicable, highlight the ideas that can be readily utilized for "edge" systems, and point out the gap that exists for other required features