The computing Grid is a new concept which aims to create a virtual
world-wide computing facility by linking together computing centres
belonging to large geographically distributed organisations. Scientific
communities such as particle physicists, biologists and space agencies
(NASA in the USA and ESA in EU) will benefit from these facilities to
establish virtual communities (often referred to as VO: Virtual
Organisations).


     The concept of the Grid, launched by Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman
in their book (The Grid, blueprint for a new computing infrastructure)
is often seen as the next major computing evolution after the WEB.


     The Grid metaphor stems from the idea of a ubiquitous, pervasive
and easy to access computing infrastructure in analogy to the electrical
power grid.


     Several research initiatives have been launched in the USA, Europe
and the rest of the world supported by governments, research agencies
and industry.


     One of the major European projects in this area is the EU-DataGrid
project initiated at CERN earlier this year with a European Union
funding of 10 Millions Euros.


     The EU-DataGrid project will prototype systems to provide
unprecedented computing power for pharmaceutical research, earth
observations and the next CERN particle accelerator called LHC.