The project will focus on two application sectors: structural and hydrological engineering, and digital TV and Movie post-production. These have very different technological requirements, but share a need for large amounts of computational power to meet peak loads. By focusing on business processes and the associated semantics, GRIA will enable users to provision for their computational needs more cost effectively, and develop new business models for some of their services.

Today, the main driver for using the Grid is the need for higher availability or peak computational performance. GRIA will create a Grid testbed that allows end-users to investigate and achieve the following:

• increased utilisation of in-house resources for running critical applications;
• increased peak capacity for running these applications by exploiting external resources run by third parties;
• increased accessibility of applications, by converting key components into Grid-based services that can be incorporated into higher-level business processes; and
• improved overall management of these processes, through greater reliability and accountability of resourcing.

The GRIA consortium is small and highly focused on achieving these goals by using off the shelf software and standards as far as possible. GRIA will take the best features from existing Grid systems and combine them with more conventional e-commerce and web-based software and standards, to support a range of applications and out-sourcing or in-sourcing scenarios.

The approach is based on the Semantic Grid model proposed at the University of Southampton. GRIA is still in its early stages, but it is already clear that Semantic Grid ideas provide a rich environment in which to develop flexible and dynamic business processes in terms of Web Ontology and Web Service standards. GRIA will promote take-up of the Grid by European industry, and contribute to the standardisation of the global Grid infrastructure through the Global Grid Forum and W3C.

The GRIA project is led by the IT Innovation Centre, an autonomous institute of the University of Southampton Department of Electronics and Computer Science, specialising in promoting the take-up of advanced information technology by industry through collaborative projects and commercial consultancy.

The other research and technology partners are the Intelligence, Agents and Multimedia group (IAM), also from the University of Southampton, the Institute of Communication and Computer Systems at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), and Dolphin Interconnect Solutions, an industrial manufacturer of low-latency, high-performance networking technology and clustering solutions.

The end users are ENEL Hydro's Hydraulic and Structural Engineering Centre, who specialise in the design, installation and operation of hydroelectric and thermal generating plant, and KINO who are one of Europe's most innovative producers of television commercials.

ENEL Hydro are experts in structural identification, which is of great value when dealing with structures that may be degraded like dams and ancient bridges in earthquake zones. Physical measurements are compared with a calculated response and the model adjusted until it agrees with the measurements. The model is then used to predict how the structure will respond to future stresses, and to design structural improvements if required. However, this approach isn't used every day so ENEL can't justify owning enough computers to run the computations quickly. GRIA will allow ENEL to outsource peak loads to a Grid service provider, or to set up their own Grid services to sell their skills and any spare computing power to other users.

KINO has similar requirements. Many of their commercials can be made cost effectively in a virtual studio using 3D digital rendering, but to meet production deadlines would require a very large computing facility which would often be idle. Moreover, KINO likes to involve their clients in the artistic side of developing a commercial, and want to provide secure access to the digital studio for this purpose. GRIA will allow KINO to outsource their peak loads for rendering to a Grid service provider. GRIA will also allow KINO to set up collaborative Grid services giving clients secure access to preliminary compositions and results, enabling participation in the creative process.

A typical GRIA user will exploit the Grid to solve a business problem by running a reasonably complex sequence of calculations. This "work flow" may involve people since the applications involve skilled structural engineers, and artistically creative digital directors and animators.

GRIA will build upon existing Web and Grid infrastructure by adding services in three key areas:

1. quality of service: end-to-end performance and availability estimation, with efficient mapping of loads onto resources;
2. interoperability: through open standards for describing resources, services and interactions;
3. business processes: software support for Grid business models and processes via secure interactions between users and suppliers.

At each step, GRIA will support an orthogonal work flow between end-user, supplier(s) and trusted third parties that make up the business process of Grid service procurement, including:

• discovering suppliers of the required services;
• negotiating terms for access (including price and quality of service);
• exchanging signed agreements to prevent repudiation by either party;
• executing the Grid service including data exchange; and
• settling according to the agreed terms, including attribution and recovery in the event of failure.

The key to GRIA is the use of a Semantic Grid approach. This is based on the use of machine-readable schema for describing data, services, and processes that use them. The project is at an early stage, but already the Semantic Grid is an appropriate paradigm for describing and implementing Grid-based business processes.

The GRIA project will develop, apply and evaluate a Grid testbed, based on an existing open-source infrastructure, which will incorporate services supporting Grid business models, business processes, and quality of service. This will enable the Grid to be used for commercial outsourcing computational services.

GRIA will show how companies like KINO can operate a "virtual digital studio" over the Grid in which they and their clients can collaborate to produce fantastic video sequences using state of the art digital composition and rendering methods exploiting 3rd party computing resources.

The project will demonstrate how companies like ENEL Hydro can exploit their specialist engineering skills to provide services to their colleagues and to external customers using a combination of outsourcing and insourcing business models over the Grid.

Since the applications come from two widely different sectors (structural engineering and TV/Movie production), the work should be widely applicable across European industry. Above all, GRIA will demonstrate how the Semantic Grid, and the merger of Grid with broader Web and e-Commerce technologies through the Open Grid Services Architecture, will support a new class of dynamic and responsive yet fully commercial virtual businesses.