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Grid computing continues to attract interest, based on the number of conferences and workshops dedicated to the topic. The idea of grid computing is intriguing to enterprises because it provides opportunities for more efficient ways to use computing resources — something many organizations are striving for as they look to cut costs and power consumption.

Grid computing enables organizations to take advantage of high-capacity computing resources by leveraging distributed systems that are connected via networks. It involves the on-demand provisioning of resources, computing resource sharing among different organizations, and the deployment of open standards and protocols. And while some say grid computing will be slow to emerge among corporate computing environments, it’s worth keeping an eye on developments because of the potential gains the technology could offer to businesses.

Among these possible benefits are significantly greater computing capacity than individual organizations could expect to have. “Grid computing allows the harnessing of more compute power than would otherwise be feasible, allowing the solving of more detailed models or simulations and/or the delivery of those answers rapidly enough to generate business advantage,” says Carl Claunch, v ice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

As for tangible business benefits, grid computing can lead to decreased capital and operating expenses, reduced product development time frames (leading to faster time to market) and productivity improvements per dollar spent on technology, says Ahmar Abbas, senior vice president at Cybernet-SlashSupport, a provider of IT services, and author of Grid Computing: A Practical Guide to Technology and Applications.

The popularity of virtualization today is contributing to interest in grid computing. “Virtualization initiatives are all the rage at companies today,” Abbas says. Virtualization is being adopted primarily to achieve cost savings through reductions in the number of servers and other hardware, as applications are consolidated onto smaller groups of systems.

“Grid computing technology platforms are essentially advanced virtualization platforms,” Abbas says. “Over the next year I expect grid computing technology vendors to continue to build their [offerings] around virtualization, and use that as the vehicle to enter beyond the traditional HPC [high-performance computing] markets. In addition, there will be greater emphasis on automation and management features of grid computing technology platforms.”

Claunch says most vendors of middleware for grid computing “are extending its functionality to act as an ü ber-manager, where it can control the operation of several different grid and cluster middleware systems from other vendors. This reflects the current usage pattern in the private sector, where grids operate as islands inside an organization, many times using different technologies from different vendors.”

But the adoption of grid computing will continue to be slow, Claunch says. “The expansion of grid computing occurs in aperiodic steps,” driven by the recognition that grid can deliver substantial business advantages, he says. “While grid could conceptually be used to improve utilization of equipment and reduce IT costs, other methods, such as virtualization, are more mature and easier to adopt to gain those same benefits.” As a result, Claunch says, grid computing will not become widely deployed in the coming years but will continue to increase in the market in smaller steps.

Abbas expects to see many organizations eventually move to a grid model. “The trend is definitely in favor of grid computing technology being deployed in broader groups of organizations over the years to come,” he says. “Asset optimization and cost rationalization, and to some extent ‘green initiatives’, are the market drivers for technologies such as grid computing.” Furthermore, “the continued focus on automation and management functionality by the grid computing vendors will make the technology less daunting to deploy and manage on an ongoing basis,” Abbas says.

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