NSF AWARDS EXTEND MIDDLEWARE DEVELOPMENT EFFORTS IN TESTING, PORTALS AND INSTRUMENTATION

ARLINGTON, Va., September 15, 2003 --The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded $9 million to support 20 projects as part of its ongoing NSF Middleware Initiative (NMI). The projects extend NMI's efforts to develop and distribute production-quality open-source and open-standards middleware and include awards that focus on experimental applications of new middleware capabilities.

Middleware is software that connects two or more otherwise separate applications across the Internet and allows those applications to share computers, data, networks and instruments. NMI participants have so far issued three releases-packages of several dozen integrated components-that are pointing the way toward a persistent national middleware infrastructure for research and enterprise computing.

"The NMI awardees are developing the shared cybertools that will help define the cyberinfrastructure of tomorrow," said Peter Freeman, head of NSF's Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering directorate. "New projects on grid portals and grid middleware for instruments represent exciting new areas for NMI. These awards work within the standards-based Open Grid Services Architecture and will extend the usability and capabilities of the cyberinfrastructure for a broad community of users."

The largest new NMI award, to the Open Grids Computing Environment (OGCE) consortium, is a collaboration to simplify the development of "grid portals," Web-based user interfaces to applications that may access a broad array of resources and services on the grid. Another new NMI project will develop a standard grid middleware architecture that will improve the accessibility and integration of scientific instruments. In addition, several of the awards continue and expand NMI's existing activities by the Grid Research Integration Deployment and Support (GRIDS) Center and the Enterprise and Desktop Integration Technologies (EDIT) Consortium. These NMI teams are developing, deploying and supporting an integrated national middleware infrastructure for science and engineering applications

Full NSF press release at http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/news/03/pr0399.htm

Media contact: David Hart, (703) 292-7737, dhart@nsf.gov
Program contact: Kevin Thompson, (703) 292-8950, kthompso@nsf.gov