"Grids have the potential to be far more important than the Internet," contends Rich Friedrich of Hewlett-Packard.
Industry executives say the first corporate grid computing markets to emerge include the aerospace, financial, and life sciences industries, whose critical operations depend on having a lot of computing power available. HP, IBM, and Sun Microsystems are among the leading tech companies developing products and services to promote grid rollout, while lesser known companies such as Avaki and Platform Computing offer grid management software.
The grid industry must develop common
technical standards in order to progress, notes Mary Spada of the
Global
Grid Forum; the Globus Project, which involves the creation of a
standards
platform that allows different networks to interoperate, is one
approach.
However, Ian Baird of Platform Computing says that, "There is no
real
standard for grids today because there is not widespread use of
grids
anywhere in a commercial sense yet." Holding up grid computing's
adoption
among businesses are unresolved security issues and a corporate
culture
that tends to frown on resource sharing between departments, a
barrier
that Baird says could dissolve as the economy continues its
slump.
(http://www.investors.com/editorial/tech01.asp)