Usability Issues of Grid System Software

This paper addresses the problem why grid technology has not spread as fast as the Web technology of the 1990's. In the past 10 years, considerable efforts have been put into grid computing. Much progress has been made and more importantly, fundamental challenges and essential issues of this field are emerging. This paper focuses on the area of grid system software research, and argues that usability of grid system software must be enhanced. It identifies four usability issues, drawing from international grid research experiences. It also presents advances by the Vega Grid team in addressing these challenges.