Getting down to grid computing

Despite its shining promise for establishing elegant, integrated, and cost-effective distributed environments, grid computing has yet to win over skeptical enterprise IT executives and reach mainstream adoption.

Already established as a building block that supports high-performance computing environments in universities and scientific research institutes, grids are now the focus of industry giants. Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems are betting they can transplant the technology into the hearts of their largest enterprise customers. But concerns that the technology is not mature, its financial track record is sketchy, and even its definition remains unclear keep many corporate users from taking the first steps toward deployment.

“The technical people are somewhat confused [by grids] because vendors are all using a different language despite the fact they are just talking about the same concept — the next wave of distributed computing,” says Dan Kusnetzky, vice president of system software at IDC.

Larry Sikon, CIO at investment bank Thomas Weisel Partners, personifies the cautious view of grids held by many corporate users. “I’m content with the applications I have in place at the moment,” Sikon says. “But [grids] are a neat concept as far as being able to tap spare CPUs, and when I have an application that might apply, such as number crunching, I would consider it.”

In much the same way as an electrical grid does for electricity users, grid computing promises to more efficiently link and provision resources across enterprise platforms. But it may take several years before its value is appreciated, says Mary Johnston Turner, vice president and practice director at research firm Summit Strategies, in an October 2003 report on enterprise grids. “Our research indicates that customers are curious about grids and want to lean more,” Johnson says. “But the jury is still out when it comes to making broad architectural commitments to it. Grid purchasing decisions will be driven by CIOs and architects looking to save money, improve their services level, and increase IT flexibility.”

The top suppliers of grid technologies, predictably, believe grids are the best way to pursue a short-term strategy such as low-level integration of departmental servers, or as a step toward creating a full-blown utility computing environment using platforms such as HP’s Adaptive Enterprise, IBM’s On Demand, Oracle’s flagship product Oracle 10G, and Sun’s N1.

IBM’s companywide On Demand program is particularly grid-centric, with the company using its WebSphere and Tivoli products to conduct policy-based management. Sun sees a grid as fundamentally offering services that provide a policy-based management via its N1 platform. HP will use its OpenView Platform as the basis of its grid strategy. The company will integrate its Talking Blocks Web services management into that platform. Oracle will build its grid hopes around its Oracle 10G database to offer infrastructure provisioning and workload management.

First Steps