Yahoo Finance recently posted a press release from Altair stating “PBS Professional Selected as Standard HPC Workload Management Solution by U.S. Department of Defense”.The interesting thing was how the term “Standard” was used.I’m all for standards. Standards promote new technology, ensure interoperability within a technical community, and guard against vendor lock in. However, standards that have no practical application behind them often remain just words on paper. It’s an interesting “chicken and the egg” problem. Do the standards come before the applications, or do implementations within applications become standards given their acceptance as technical solutions. Sometimes these de-facto standards, regardless of who gives them that moniker, carry more weight. This fits right in with a recent Globus Consortium Journal observation by William Fellows of The 451 Group .When asked the question, “without standards, it is sometimes said, the adoption of grid in the data center will stall, which standards are going to make a difference?” He responded with the following:Early adopters of grid computing have asked clearly and consistently for some pretty basic standards that would make their lives easier-things like having a common IO, a common way to get data in and out of a grid, and a common stack or interface that would allow their developers to use some common tools. We don’t think it makes sense to really plumb the myriad and complex world of standardization, since most early adopters we speak with don’t have any interest in it. They do not feel that their needs are being heard, and, consequently, they don’t think any of it is practically useful. We’d like to offer up a challenge to OGF, pick one or two of these key challenges and find a technical solution to these problems. If they don’t, then how long before it becomes relevant or someone else does it instead? Technology Industry