One On One With IBM Grid Guru

Al Bunshaft, vice president, grid computing sales for IBM, recently spoke with IT Utility Pipeline Editor Kelley Damore about the current implementations of grid computing in commercial enterprises and why he thinks one in five business could deploy grid in the next two years.

IT Utility Pipeline: Can you explain the promise of grid computing in layman's terms?

Bunshaft: Grid is about the coordination of resources over a network. It is really the evolution of distributed computing. Think about the Internet: for the first 10 years we were providing a base of standards that worked with one another to coordinate resources. [Now with grid] we are developing a similar set of common standards for the coordination of resources for common workloads.

IT Utility Pipeline: Grid had its roots in scientific and academic communities. How does this technology translate into commercial environments?

Bunshaft: IBM is very focused on commercial adoption and on applications that can deliver value today. A logical starting point is vertical applications. We have been focused on business analytics, engineering and design and R&D. For more horizontal applications, we've also been working [in areas such as] government development where a country may develop a grid for economic development. We are also looking at enterprise optimization, [where an organization] can build an analytical compute backbone -- a single common infrastructure which can be utilized on-demand. Applications well suited for [grid today] are financial, industrial, life sciences and pharmaceutical areas.A great example is Charles Schwab. We've [developed] a wealth management application for them to perform portfolio forecasting. Previously, with non-IBM systems, it took 266 seconds to analyze 35 assets. [With our implementation] the same 35 assets run in 26 seconds.

Bank of America is working with IBM to source after-hours processing capacity with IBM's data center This is the beginning of grid and utility computing overlapping. It is not a grid utility but you can use utility computing concepts in grid environments.

IT Utility Pipeline: Research firm Evans Data Corp. said that one in five companies may deploy grid in the next two years. Do you agree with this prediction?

Bunshaft: I do think so. If we mean one in five companies will implement an enterprise grid, I think that is too aggressive. If we mean specific areas taking advantage of grid technology, I definitely see this coming. I see grid as an on-demand operating environment. It is able to make businesses more adaptable and responsible.

IT Utility Pipeline: What is the next step for grid?Bunshaft: The next step is getting applications on board. We are beginning to work with software vendors that are more vertically oriented. There are application vendors targeting the industrial space. The next area of growth is for standard apps to support grid computing and end-users exploit the benefits of grid computing.