If you have limited resources whether you are running a business, shepherding a community or running a university, wouldn’t you like it if all of your computing resources can be focused on a specific but critical task at hand? How about a cost-effective use of your limited computing resources? What, if we dare ask, would be the savings if you can synergise and manage all your computing power towards common goals?
Flexibility when it comes to infrastructure? Is it even possible for enterprise IT?
Yes, a big resounding yes.
Grid computing brings a way to usher an enterprise into sphere of choices by giving it a nice little remote control using which it can increase, decrease or neutralize its capacity issues; have bandwidth made available at a moment’s notice; plan well for peak resource requirements and worst-case scenarios. It is grid computing that is the engine of growth for other related trends such as utility computing, virtualization, cloud computing, etc.
Grid Computing is the application of the resources of many computers in a network to a single problem at the same time, and which requires the use of software that can divide and farm out pieces of a program to as many as several thousand computers -- essentially distributed, large-scale cluster computing.
Scores of businesses, universities, communities and other organizations are already beginning to invest in frameworks for software that can support Grid Computing operations.
Sun Microsystems, for instance, has the Grid Engine Software that allows companies like Sony to pool in the resources of over 80 computer cycles at the same time to get complex computing operations done and to improve productive capacity. Europe and the U.S invested whopping sums of money into projects dealing with high-energy physics experiments, bio-mechanics, and earth sciences.
How does Grid Computing help businesses?
Wired.com’s article titled “Grid Computing Good for business”[1] is an excellent primer on how Grid Computing helps small business. The big ones such as IBM and Hewlett Packard already use Grid Computing to a large extent with many others looking to dive right in. Charles Schwab is one such early entrant.
Needless to say, there are old timers who have been working with Grid Computing for quite some time now. One of the popular projects is the Alien Scouring Project which is popularly known as SETI@home[2] project. Earth Quake Simulations and even large gaming companies that host large online multi-player games are excited about the possibilities grid computing has to offer.
What about you? Will you need Grid Computing for your business?
References:
[1] Grid Computing Good for business
[2] SETI@home
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