Draft Recommendation for engaging industry in Grid Computing, E&T

Definition of Grid Computing

• More focussed on „distributed computing“ (including the multi-institutional part)
• ultimately many „local“ d/c types might become multi-institutional
• Also local Grid types have complex trust issues
• Use OGF definitions (-> see reference on the OGF Web Site)

Definition of OGF roles and roles of participating companies

• OGF: Define what should be tested in examination, basic set of skills
• Copyright of certification details would be automatically with OGF because of the way it is produced (as an informational document)
• OGF should not define all questions
• But: OGF should do quality assurance for questions and answers
• We should not get into competition with quality assurance companies
• Need professional body with enough resources to establish assurance process to prevent OGF from being sued for denying a company accreditation
  • Companies that want to be accredited need to pay
• Meeting for quality assurance every second OGF (but if third party does the QA is this necessary?)
• Suggested process (Malcolm):
  • Develop an outline of what is required to be accredited
  • Talk with other bodies already in the accreditation business to see if one would work with us -> invite several for OGF20 ?
  • A set of companies are keen on formulating courses enabling them to be senior IT officers of organisations, might also be interested in Grid Engineering courses
  • Form working relationship. OGF maintains the criteria, the professional body runs the process
• Role of companies:
  • E.g. training companies, testing companies, accreditation organisations (sometimes non-commercial ??)
  • We need to have meetings with them
• If we do this in the context of OGF we need to have a global perspective and get input from Europe, US, Asia, ...
  • In Asia: talk to people in Japan (K., D.,M.), Taiwan, Korea (D., M.), China (M.)
  • Europe straight forward
  • US: need to find out

Funding

See above - companies who want their courses to be accredited will pay for it

How do we name the child

1.Certified Grid Technician (works supervised)

• Base Module / Technician
• 1 specialisation module ?
• more work on practical than conceptual skills
• need to see what the market is to decide the skills they need first rather than deciding what modules they need
• length depends on content, but constrained by length of time which employer is likely to allow user to spend in training

2.Certified Grid Engineer (works unsupervised)

• Base Module / Engineer (same topics as for CGT, but more in-depth)
• n>1 modules, one offer should installation/administration
• conceptual and practical skills

Migration path Technician -> Engineer ?

• CGE is a superset of CGT
• Need to define base modules in much more detail then! (Grid History 1, GH2, ...)

Benefits to training and certification companies

• They get a certification that has OGF authority behind it
• Acceptance by blue chips, banks, etc. would be a safe sale
• Get a bigger market (the existence of a certification will grow this market)

Company types to talk to

• training companies
• testing companies
• accreditation organisations
• potential employers !!! (banks, blue chips, ...)

Message to transfer

• Creating Grid-specific requirements for professional certification
• People use Grids, they need Grid professionals

Examination Infrastructure / How do examinations work

• Examination meaningless without practical work
• Certification Companies need interface to t-Infrastructure providers
  • One of the major issues of t-Infrastructure is support, not really solved (but being covered in the t-Infrastructure sessions)
  • Commercial t-Infrastructure provider ??
  • two step process – start small without practical part, until market is big enough
  • Grid in a box, network in a box ?
  • Grid-in-a-box with local set-up by certification companies
  • Limited grid-in-a-box might be provided with a certain number of middlwares supported

Rough structure of covering document to potential commercial participants

Should probably be no more than about five pages -> refer to other documents, appendix with definition of GC, etc.

1. Executive Summary
2. Introduction
3. Intended effects of a commercial Grid certification
4. Roadmap to establish a Certified Grid Engineer degree
   • Help needed to establish theses goals / where do we need help from commercial companies
5. Layout of certification (base modules, extension modules, ...)
   • Relationship between examination and training
   • Types of certificates (long term, short term, GCT, GCE, ...)
6. Definition of OGF roles and roles of participating companies
7. Examination infrastructure (VUE, multiple choice, hands-on, ...)
8. Proposed Copyright / Legal procedure (OGF copyright)

Miscellaneous

• Agree with training and certification companies on 2-3 Grid flavors in the beginning.
• Provider of a specific Grid technology must create module
• Reference implementation ? Should be done by gLite, OMII Europe, ... ?
• Some core materials should come from ICEAGE or Summerschools
• OGF wouldn't be responsible for producing content