Grid Growth Shows at German Forum

Users from around the world are converging on Humboldt University in Berlin this week for the tenth Global Grid Forum (GGF), which comes at a time when interest in Grid computing is on the rise.

Grid computing harnesses the processing power of a number of computers to solve specific problems, which often involve vast amounts of data. Charlie Catlett, chair of the GGF says, We are seeing a consistent growth of interest in Grid technologies over the past 12 to 18 months for a variety of reasons.”

“We have 600 people registered [for the event] as of last week, which is about 30 percent higher than we typically see at a working meeting,’ he adds.

Grid computing has long been synonymous with high-level scientific research, but it's now expanding from its traditional niche in industries such as bioinformatics and finance, according to Catlett. As a result, the Forum has experienced a surge in interest from IT specialists who are focused on enterprise-wide computing, as well as from traditional grid users, he says.

Catlett also feels that the growing maturity of grid computing software and standards is helping attract the attention of new users. For the last two years, the GGF has been working on a standard called the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA), which Catlett describes as the first real "roadmap" for Grid computing.He says, “Our success in layering this architecture on top of commercial Web services has begun to raise the visibility of grids in the commercial IT arena.”

A number of vendors, most notably IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM), are already working on high-profile grid computing projects. Last December, Harvard University announced that it is working with IBM to build a university-wide Crimson Grid, which will be used in areas such as life sciences, engineering, and applied sciences.

Around the same time, the German Met Office, the German Federal Authority for Hydraulic Engineering, and the German Federal Authority for Maritime Navigation announced that selected parts of their IT infrastructures would be connected by a grid network using IBM server technology (see Germans Go for the Grid).

Earlier this year, a survey of nearly 550 database developers by market research firm Evans Data Corp. found that one in five companies is likely to deploy grid computing in the next two years (see Open Source Gains on Microsoft).

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum0