EC Goes for the Grid

There has been plenty of vendor hype about the use of grid computing in industry, but governments are still the main drivers of grid deployments.

Tomorrow, for example, the European Commission will officially take the wraps off 12 new grid computing projects, which are designed to bring the technology out of the laboratory and into the workplace. Last week, the EC announced $64 million worth of funding to bring together universities, research institutes, and companies across Europe in developing grids (see EC Boosts Grid Computing).

The new EC projects include Simdat, which is targeted at grid applications in the automotive, aerospace, and pharmaceutical industries; and the Akogrimo scheme to support mobile communications and IPv6.

Oracle Corp. (Nasdaq: ORCL), EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC), and Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) have been among those touting the benefits of enterprise grids for some time. Earlier this year, the three joined forces with a number of other vendors to form the Enterprise Grid Alliance, a consortium devoted to spreading the grid gospel amongst businesses (see Sun Joins Grid Group).

But, for the most part, industry is still getting its head around grid computing, which enables compute, network, and storage resources to be shared right across an organizations IT infrastructure. Even in the telecom sector, which is potentially one of the biggest beneficiaries of the technology, firms are coming up against hurdles such as security, performance, and lack of effective business models (see Telecom Firms Grappling With the Grid).However, there are some examples of industry putting its faith in grid technology. Yesterday, for example, Japanese motor manufacturer Mazda teamed up with NEC Corp. (Nasdaq: NIPNY; Tokyo: 6701) to test a server grid across a range of Mazda locations (see Mazda, NEC to Test Grid).

Even this project, however, is part of “Focus 21,” a business grid initiative promoted by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI), which aims to develop grid middleware and standards that can be used by enterprises.

The story is pretty much the same in the U.S., with the Federal Government and its research labs grabbing most of the grid headlines (see Sun Grid Used in Idaho and Supercomputers Boost Grid Computing).

However, Robert Cohen, fellow of Washington-based think-tank Economic Strategy Institute, says don’t be fooled: Some firms have already started work on secret grid projects.

”The benefits are very competitive, so companies don’t want to disclose what they are able to accomplish,” he asserts.But even Cohen acknowledges that it will be a few years before we see widespread enterprise grid deployments: “We will see more of a commercial ramp-up in 2005, 2006, and 2007. It will be really visible in 2007 and 2008."

One factor that will drive enterprise grid uptake between now and 2008 is a growing skills base, according to Cohen. “The more people that come out of university that know how to work with grids, the easier the commercial uptake will be,” he predicts.

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum