|
Hi there, I'm Max Munny, and I am really interested in
the business potential of grids.
Grid technology
is already a serious business. A lot of that business really addresses
local networks - "intraGrids"
- in companies, which grid purists do not consider to be "real grid".
Still, out of humble beginnings, great things may come. According to
one study by the Insight Research
Corporation, estimates for the market for grid technology are 250m$
in 2003, going to 4.9bn$ in 2008.
The business world of grid technology can be divided roughly into established
IT giants and new grid "pure plays", many of which are
recent startups. By now, just about every major IT corporation
has a grid strategy, and a few quotes about some of the star CEOs in the
IT business makes this clear:
"HP
CEO Carly Fiorina on Wednesday promised OracleWorld attendees here
an aggressive push into grid computing based on adding grid capabilities
to more products, supporting open standards, and focusing on research
and development."
(E-Week September 11th 2003) |
"Championing
what he called the IT industry's first new architecture in 40 years,
Oracle Chairman and CEO Larry Ellison at OracleWorld on Tuesday formally
introduced the company's grid-enabled database and application server."
(InfoWorld September 9th 2003) |
"A new era of
computing based on continually active computing grids has begun, and
Big Blue is positioned to take a lead in it, said IBM's Sam Palmisano
[now CEO of IBM]."
(C-NET February 20th 2002) |
…and so on.
Of course, providers of grid solutions are bound to be upbeat, but what
about the users? Here are some quotes that show broad interest and awareness
in several fields:
- Computer Gaming
"Sony's CTO, Shin'ichi Okamoto, confirmed that the PlayStation
3 will focus on distributed computing […]"
"Moore's Law is too slow for us. We can't wait 20 years to achieve
a 1,000-fold increase in PlayStation performance."
" […] Okamoto revealed that his company is working with IBM
to apply the latter's research in grid computing, which is a sort of
distributed computing, to the PlayStation." (Infosatellite.com
March 22, 2002.)
- Financial Service
"We believe that grid computing … has the potential to
greatly improve our quality of service and be a truly disruptive technology."
Oren Leiman, Managing Director, Charles Schwab (IBM Grid presentation)
- Oil and Gas Prospecting
"Grid computing is important to Shell because it offers
the potential to create a truly unlimited resource, with a uniform interface
to a variety of services. This is a significant opportunity for Shell
to engage its independent companies in closer cooperation."
J.N. Buur, Principal Research Physicist, Shell International Exploration
and Production B.V. (IBM Grid presentation)
Alongside the big players in the IT industry, a host of grid startups
are thriving. Many of them have strategic alliances with the big players,
who prefer to adopt a "wait-and-see" strategy about grid
computing, waiting for the best solutions and reliable standards to evolve
before making big investments. Some of those companies are listed in the
industrial grid activities
page, with a short excerpt of blurbs about their products, to give a feel
for what they are doing.
|
