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would be a network of mobile handheld
devices for coordinating medical person-
nel in the hospital. A local cluster can be
used to coordinate field personnel engaged
in collaborative tasks such as construction,
mining, or repair services. It can also be
used in a remote sensor network for moni-
toring crops or seismic activities. It re-
mains to be seen whether market forces
will result in convergence of hardware
(virtual or real) and software and the emer-
gence of a dominant design, which can ex-
ploit resource-sharing strategies that are
more intimately bound to the device.
•
Wireless Intra-Grids:
An intra-grid en-
compasses wireless devices that belong to
multiple divisions or communities within
an actual organization (AO). The divisions
may be located in different geographies
and maybe governed by a separate set of
policies, but there exists a level of trust and
oversight so that “ground truth” may be
known with respect to identity and charac-
teristics. AOs are the point where resolu-
tion can occur between the virtual presence
of a wireless entity and its actual name and
location. AOs also tend to be persistent in
time, and become the point of composition
among other AOs. An example of an intra-
grid would be a wireless grid that simul-
taneously supports the mobile sales force
of a company and the networks of wireless
sensors used by the manufacturing division
for tracking inventory. Similarly, an intra-
grid can be used by a facilities management
company to monitor its facilities and to co-
ordinate its personnel to address service re-
quests from the facilities. One can expect a
detailed interaction among the constituents
of an intra-grid due to tighter interaction
in the business processes. A salesperson
can request the status of inventory for his
or her customer through the intra-grid that
connects the sales network to the inventory
tracking system.
•
Inter-Grid:
An inter-grid encompass-
es multiple AOs and transcends greater
amounts of geographical, organizational,
and other types of differences, such as ones
related to intellectual property rights and
national laws. Multiple AOs may come
together to form Virtual Organizations
(VOs) where they can collaborate and
share resources such as information,
knowledge, and even market access to
exploit fast-changing market opportuni-
ties. The relationship can be long or short
term (Ong, 2003). Resource management
and policy integration (security, authenti-
cation and data management tasks) attain
greater complexity due to the scalability
requirements. To move beyond mere ad
hoc composition of AOs, a (potentially)
universal composition of declarative poli-
cies must be proposed and accepted. An
example of an inter-grid interaction would
be a scenario involving an American tour-
ist visiting Japan and trying to conduct a
local e-commerce transaction using his/her
cell phone. The transaction would involve
a handshake between the traveler's cell
phone service provider, traveler's credit
card company, the Japanese wireless ser-
vice provider and the e-commerce vendor.
Mobile devices with internet access are
another example an inter-grid implementa-
tion. Each device has a unique id associat-
ed with an IP address. It allows the device
to access web pages from any other node
connected through the internet using the
internet protocols. The scope of such inter-
actions would be limited due to the loose
connections between the constituents of an
inter-grid.
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