In the 1980s, corporate executives didn’t think of the Internet as an essential business tool. In just 10 years, the World Wide Web turned the Internet into an essential communication tool and a main way to conduct business. Just as the Web changed the way we interacted in the 1990s. Today the Access Grid will be a vital part of the next generation of communication technologies. In establishing an Access Grid here at Prairie View A&M University, the University will become a link in its growing chain of worldwide science, engineering, and educational users.

The Access Grid is an ensemble of resources including multimedia large-format displays, presentation and interactive environments, and interfaces to Grid middleware and to visualization environments.

These resources are used to support group-to-group interactions across the Grid. For example, the Access Grid (AG) is used for large-scale distributed meetings, collaborative work sessions, seminars, lectures, tutorials, and training. The Access Grid thus differs from desktop-to-desktop tools that focus on individual communication.

The Access Grid has over issued 3,400 certificates to users across 47 countries. Each institution has one or more AG nodes, or "designed spaces," that contain the high-end audio and visual technology needed to provide a high-quality compelling user experience. The nodes are also used as a research environment for the development of distributed data and visualization corridors and for the study of issues relating to collaborative work in distributed environments.

At its simplest, the Access Grid is a collection of familiar resources (projectors, cameras, microphones) linked by networked computers to enable audiovisual collaboration between remote participants: videoconferencing. However, in contrast to familiar point-to-point services or ISDN-based teleconferencing between a small number of sites, the Access Grid scales to handle large numbers of participating groups. Just as importantly, the Access Grid provides interfaces to Grid middleware enabling the creation of new tools for collaborative visualization, data-sharing, remote control of instruments and interaction with other grid resources.