Hello Shane Austin,
The WCG staff (all IBM employees) live in the USA. We host the servers wherever IBM thinks it is cheapest for the required quality. We used to host our servers a mile up in the Colorado Rockies area. Now we have moved them to Canada, which is apparently chillier and cheaper to cool. WCG reports to Community Relations at IBM headquarters.

We started when the HPF project scientists asked Oxford if the project could be hosted on the UD grid like Oxford's project. Oxford said that IBM had co-sponsored a biology project on the UD grid a year or so earlier and suggested that HPF approach IBM for funding.

At least, this is the impression that I have gained from comments over the years. I do not really know the early history, so all this may just be a fantasy that I have created. Anyway, IBM liked the idea but decided to establish their own grid that they controlled and actively search for new computer projects to support that met their standards of open non-proprietary disclosure of results to the public domain for all to use, with humanitarian goals potentially serving broad swathes of mankind.

Since UD was experienced in grid computing, we supported co-hosting the HPF project on both the UD grid and the new WCG grid. WCG started by cloning the UD setup and modifying the database to meet IBM standards.

After a year's experience, IBM decided to switch to BOINC. For a while, we ran both BOINC and UD versions of projects. We had to modify the BOINC server software to make it compatible with the existing UD server software, so it was not just a simple clone job. Eventually we turned off the UD software and went all BOINC. Which means you should ignore the UNIVA web page (Thanks for showing it to me. It has been years since I read anything by UD, except when they shut down their grid. Instead, you should look at BOINC at http://boinc.berkeley.edu/

We have been so busy supporting projects that we have never been able to replace our hacked version of BOINC server software with the standard BOINC server software. Which is another way of stating that we are stretching dollars till they screech to accomplish our main priority.

Come Monday the WCG staff will read your post and hopefully contemplate the About Us page. It might even lead to a Change entry, though the 2011 schedule has a number of priorities, so it is unlikely to be quickly scheduled.

Lawrence

Shane,

Thanks for question and Lawrence did a good job explaining the whole thing.

We are not in hiding ... we don't like to flaunt who we are. The focus is on World Community Grid, not our employer.

Click on the IBM logo on the home page if you need more information.

In your first post in this thread you said that many of your friends would join if they knew.

Let us know how many of your friends joined now that they know it's IBM.

Hmm...WCG is basically under-staffed so web pages will take time to change, at least that is how i read it. The wheels of change grind so slowly, I guess the WCG staff need a blog of their experiences, maybe that will help?

Good explanation. And all this time I thought it was because of all those groupies that would be hanging around wanting autographs and favours. You have to watch out for those badge stalkers too.

Cheers and good morning.