the department of information technology (dit), government of india has funded the centre for development of advanced computing (c-dac) to deploy the nationwide computational grid garuda. in proof of concept (poc) phase which ended on march 2008, 17 cities across the country were connected with an aim to bring “grid” networked computing to research labs and industry. from april 2008 the foundation phase is in progress with an aim to include more users’ applications, providing service oriented architecture, improving network stability and upgrading grid resources. garuda will assist to accelerate india’s drive to turn its substantial research investment into tangible economic benefits.