News Item Dated: 13 January 2003
From: Network World  01/06/03) Vol. 20, No. 1, P. 43; Franklin Jr., Curtis

Grid computing systems are computers or clusters of computers linked via job scheduling or management software in order to enable the sharing, selection, and aggregation of computing resources. The advantages of the grid computing model include lower operational costs and easier upgrading. Categories of grids include traditional systems that harness CPU cycles, data grids that channel terabytes of data between sites for study, and access grids supplying multi-site videoconferencing and application sharing.

Grid computing standards such as the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) are being developed by the Global Grid Forum, while the Globus Project follows an OGSA-based open-source approach. IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett-Packard have their own grid projects, yet they too use the OGSA standard. Early corporate adopters of grid computing include oil and gas companies, the financial services industry, automotive and aerospace engineering concerns, and the bioinformatics sector. For now, most grids are organized around computers from a single vendor or based on one particular operating system because of as-yet unresolved security, accounting, and administration issues.

Although standards are being developed, they are proceeding at a slower pace than the market would prefer. Still, the technology holds so much promise that Butterfly.net CEO David Levine says, "In five years, I can't imagine a company not using a grid." Bloor Research analyst Jane Clabby says, "Within five to 10 years we'll be talking about grids the way we talk about the Internet today."

Interested? For further reading, check out this link: http://www.nwfusion.com/research/2003/0106grid.html