FSU Leads World in Global Grid Contributions

Fairmont State University is currently the world's leading donor of computing cycles to the West Virginia High Technology Consortium (WVHTC) Foundation's Global Grid Exchange.

The Global Grid Exchange is one of various components of an overall initiative by U.S. Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, D-W.Va., aimed at strengthening the competitiveness of West Virginia and U.S. companies by creating and utilizing high-tech processes. FSU was notified this week that the institution is currently "leading the pack" of Grid donors.

"We estimate that FSU's contribution since last fall has delivered approximately $9 million to the West Virginia economy by helping to provide computing resources that have resulted in dramatically lower costs for statewide research initiatives," said Dr. Daniel J. Bradley, Fairmont State University President.

An initiative of the WVHTC Foundation, the Global Grid Exchange is an online marketplace that delivers the spare processing power of countless Internet-connected computers to users involved in business, science and medical research. With access to hardware resources ranging from PCs to mainframes, the Global Grid Exchange can deliver computing power on demand to any desktop computer over the Internet, creating a cost-effective computation infrastructure able to drive innovation in the commercial, government and academic sectors around the world.

"Our Information Technology staff members were able to easily and quickly install the Global Grid Exchange software on a significant number of workstations on campus, with little or no negative impact to our faculty and students," said Mike Bestul, FSU's Chief Information Officer. "We are very pleased that we are able to share our technology with the Global Grid Exchange and the research efforts that benefit from it. In addition, starting with this fall semester, our faculty, students and researchers will begin to leverage the power of the Global Grid Exchange directly, thus further enhancing Fairmont State's educational and research efforts while at the same time strengthening our partnership with this important technology initiative for the state of West Virginia."

FSU's lab computers are only utilized by the grid while sitting in "idle mode," in other words when no work is being done on the computers but they are powered up and on the Internet. This often occurs late in the evenings and overnight. Installation and maintenance of the grid software is minimal, and there are virtually no security risks to the institution because of the way the software is designed and deployed in FSU's new layered network environment. Ultimately, Global Grid Exchange providers enable the exciting discoveries made by researchers, scientists, engineers and businesses using the grid.

The WVHTC Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Fairmont, W.Va., and functions as an engine of economic change for growing a statewide and regional high tech business sector. The Foundation has established a multi-faceted approach to maximize economic development, including infrastructure development, research and development, commercialization and workforce development.