Organizations Promoting Grid Computing

Welcome to the August issue of the Globus Consortium Journal. Over the last few months we have looked very specifically at how grid computing is being driven by examining the elements of the IT stack and their effect on grids. Some of the elements we have looked at included: vendor security initiatives, the Linux operating system and open source computing, application development, networking products, and storage vendors. We've interviewed the best in their respective fields in these areas and I feel we've provided some very valuable data points. It also appears to me that we've set the table for future Journal interviews based off of the experts and what they had to say to delve deeper - in may instances we've just scratched the surface of this topic.

This month's Journal moves past the IT stack discussions and jumps into what is actually happening in the field. We are looking at organizations that are pushing grid technology development, production, adoption, and services by what they are doing and have done with grids. Some of the questions we looked to answer in this month's Journal include:

• What is the size of the grid market?
• What are organizations spending on grid today? What is spending forecast to be in the future?
• Where are organizations spending on grid and what exactly are they doing?
• Beyond enterprise computing, what else can a grid be used for? How do grids work in a non-enterprise environment?
• How can standard's bodies in Grid help? What are they doing today to push grid and what will they do in the future?
• Is anyone actually making money selling enterprise grids today? How are they doing it?
• How does the research to enterprise funnel for technology tools push grid computing? What's coming in the future from this channel?

We begin this month's Journal by asking Bob Rosenberg of Insight Research to explain the methodology and data points in his company's recent sizing report on grid computing. If you haven't seen it yet, Bob is forecasting that spending on grid computing in 2011 will be over $20 Billion dollars! We then look at the potential for grid computing in endeavors beyond enterprise computing. Robin Wilner of IBM gives us the details on the World Community Grid and how it's newest application will push grid technology over the next few years. Next, Mark Linesch of OGF will explain his thoughts on the creation of the OGF and how organizations should be building grids today - one at a time. Furthering on Mark's thoughts regarding building grids, Ed Hawes of VCompute joins us to explain how his company is doing very well selling grids in the energy space. And finally, a regular, Ian Foster talks about how his new appointment as Director of the Computation Institute will lead to better grid tools in the enterprise.

On a side note... For those interested in dipping their toes in the "Globus pool" but are unsure about where to start, the Globus Consortium has created a step by step self paced Globus Toolkit Compute Grid Tutorial. It is available on the Globus Consortium web site at: http://www.globusconsortium.org/tutorial/

close window