The inSORS Grid has its roots in the scientific and research communities of academia, where it was dreamt up and drawn out for the single purpose of supporting immediate and immersive collaborations amongst disparate teams of engineers. The impetus behind the project was a desire to advance communications in laboratory settings beyond the typical capabilities offered by standard teleconferencing and videoconferencing technologies. The goal of the project, then, was to create a powerful and practical communication tool that offered instant and immersive audio, video, and data-sharing capabilities.

The members of these communities consisted of a voluntary consortium of individuals and groups acting together to advance the science and application of high-performance computing technology. Since 1988, groups from laboratories, research centers, and various national foundations and societies have gathered at the annual meeting of the Super Computing Conferences Organization, which focuses on high-performance computing and communications issues. It was at these conferences that organizations such as Argonne National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Science Foundation Supercomputer Centers, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and the Center for Computing Sciences began to develop the concept that would eventually become the inSORS Grid.

At the 1995 Super Computing event, researchers were solicited to do network computing that involved supercomputers, Immersadesks, high-speed networks, and high-end visualization. The I-WAY demonstration at Super Computing '95 connected dozens of centers worldwide via high-speed OC-3 networks to run over 60 applications for one week in San Diego. I-WAY was the first demonstration to clearly show there was a whole new kind of application that was suddenly possible.

From its genesis as a heavy system consisting of a multi-machine user interface that was operated by super-computer scientists, engineers, and researchers, the inSORS Grid's precursor (the Access Grid) and its related technologies have been considerably lightened in terms of ease of use and availability. inSORS has undertaken the task of eliminating the extensive training that a typical user would need to operate an Access Grid node and brought to market the inSORS Grid as a single-server interface system in which a user simply clicks on a room link and "carries" a physical room into a virtual room environment.

Through extensive research and development among inSORS researchers and engineers and original Access Grid scientists from Argonne National Laboratory, inSORS has refined and simplified the Grid system for the needs of today's corporate and academic users through its Virtual Venue software, intuitive interfaces, and advanced technology.