S.Dallaosta, P.Maggi, M.Melato,L.Torrello

One of the most exciting areas of Grid Computing is the construction of Grid Portals. These ones can greatly simplify the use of Grid-enabled applications thanks to their user-friendly interface.
The main goal of Grid Portals is to hide the details and the complexity of the Grid infrastructure to users in order to improve usability and utilization of the Grid.
Usability can be picked up lowering end-user requirements for accessing the Grid and verticalizing the service offering. At the same time utilization can be improved making the Grid evolution transparent to the enduser and enforcing Grid utilization policies.
A number of Grid portals have become popular in the scientific research community.