Two former dueling grid groups Monday made good on their February promise to merge with the mission of speeding the adoption of grid technology worldwide.

The Global Grid Forum (GGF) and the Enterprise Grid Alliance (EGA) will become the Open Grid Forum (OGF). The combined standards body will be led by Mark Linesch as OGF president and CEO. Linesch was previously the GGF chairman.

"This is an opportunity to bring the entire grid community together and to more efficiently collaborate with key stakeholders in other parts of the world," Linesch said. "We'll be able to communicate with a single voice more clearly around grid and distributed computing issues." OGF will likely reach out to other standards bodies outside the grid world, notably the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Storage Networking Industry Association, he added.

In the past, despite the GGF's stronger focus on the grid requirements of IT vendors and the EGA's emphasis on meeting the needs of enterprise users, the two organizations sometimes appeared in conflict with each other. This apparent disharmony led to speculation about whether a single organization would better serve the needs of GGF and EGA constituents.

"If there was any confusion in the marketplace, hopefully that will be addressed by the OGF," said Don Deutsch, former president of the EGA. "Virtually all of enterprise technology providers will be at this table and speaking with one voice."

The GGF and EGA signed a nonbinding merger agreement on Feb. 6. As of Monday, they signed a definitive agreement to merge. The new combined entity plans its official "coming-out party" with a full lineup of board members to coincide with the GridWorld conference which is due to take place Sept. 11-14 in Washington, D.C., Linesch said.

In surveys, GGF and EGA members have called for a combined organization to link the interests of the academic, corporate and government grid communities, he added. The members also want to see openness and a democratic process from the OGF in how the body conducts its operations.

"We're attempting to really balance the capabilities of the EGA and the GGF," Linesch said. He also stressed OGF's desire to achieve balance between its membership, aiming at companies such as HP, IBM and Oracle and at individuals involved in grid technology.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.