A taxonomy for desktop grids from users' perspective

We present here our taxonomy of desktop grid systems and some hints on how to use it to solve real-world problems. We have customized this taxonomy according to user' perspective to counterbalance the existent taxonomies that are mainly focused on the developers' viewpoint. Our taxonomy is three-level and hierarchical. The first level refers to infrastructure and includes resource type, the platform that runs at the provider, scalability and security issues. The second one includes conceptual model, architecture and data model. The last level concerns aspects related to software: application type, administrator privileges, architecture of the support operating system, and licensing. A table with the classification of the main desktop grids according to this taxonomy is provided. We have been applying here our experience in developing a desktop grid system (QADPZ) in order to satisfy the demands of the specialists in scientific computing and visualization wrt. user goals, needs and restrictions. Examining few typical application scenarios has eased crafting a user-centric taxonomy. We hope that our approach will help promote the introduced taxonomy as a practice for its potential users.