What does the future hold for Ice Grid?

[jchanning]

What new features can we expect to see in Ice Grid in the near future? Given that the challenges with grid computing are (in increasing order of difficulty):

• distributing tasks - Ice Grid has this covered
• distributing data (bringing tasks and data together)
• monitoring, measuring and analysing what is going on in the grid

Are there any plans for to build data grid functionality or provide more system administration tools? (e.g. similar to those provided by Microsoft HPC Server)

[cwcork]

For distributing data, it would be nice if Ice Grid had something
along the lines of DDS with mappings to Slice instead of OMG IDL.

[bernard]

Regarding IceGrid, we will naturally incorporate a number of enhancements in the next release, based on the feedback we get from our customers or on these forums. For example we may improve the IceGrid registry to simplify the implementation of custom location-policies like the one described by your colleague: application architecture question

Also, Ice and IceGrid aren't becoming HPC servers; if you're looking for such a product, you should check out SGI's new ISLE framework, based on Ice:
http://www.zeroc.com/customers/SGI.html

Regarding DDS: at present, there is no DDS-like service in the works. Of course, this could change if a customer interested in such a service for a real project wants to sponsor its development.

Best regards,
Bernard