ITU-T hosted a workshop NGN and Grids in collaboration with the Open Grid Forum (OGF) in Geneva, 23-24 October 2006.

ITU-T’s Global Standards Initiative on Next Generation Network (NGN-GSI) is well under way and is responding to urgent market needs for global NGN standards. NGN offers increased quality and service features for users, independent of the underlying transport technology.

Grids have been widely used in the scientific community. Increasingly, Grids are being deployed within commercial settings. The Open Grid Forum is actively reaching out to communities such as the Telco community to advance Grid adoption, interoperability and scalability. Different scenarios for Telcos can be envisioned: Telcos may 1) specialize in network SLAs that are optimally suited to Grids; 2) use Grids for their IT internal needs; and/or 3) offer Grids as a managed service to customers.

The joint ITU-T/OGF workshop brought together the telecoms industry and the Grid community to:

• Review the present status of applications, services and business opportunities in Grid networks and NGNs.
• Discuss future evolution for Grids and NGNs both in terms of business opportunities and related technical requirements.
• Identify relevant existing international standards as well as gaps in the standardization framework for Grids and NGNs.
• Understand what additional features required by Grids should be considered in ITU-T’s NGN Release 2.
• Identify the impact of NGN on Grids.
• Contribute to the establishment of a roadmap for future standardization activities among major players.
• Prepare a coordinated action plan on urgent standardization issues between standards developing organizations and fora/consortia working in this area.