Special Features:
ARE SOFTWARE AND HARDWARE VENDORS
ACCEPTING THE GRID?
There seems to be a movement in the software and harware market that is
beginning to look like the grid is no longer restricted to the scientific and
research domains.
Although, for many years, researchers, academia and scientist have used and
relaized the potential of the grid, the business community is finally getting
more involved in using the grid to solve prolems in their daily
acctivities.
For years, scientists have used grids to solve complex problems in areas
such as forecasting weather, modeling nuclear explosions, sequencing genes and
analyzing seismic data. What's new is that grids are being used for more
practical business problems, including risk analysis, digital content creation
and data mining.
Grid vendors anticipate a flood of product announcements this spring,
including Web server, operating system and network management software.
Traditionally associated with scientific and technical applications, grid
computing is making its first forays into corporate networks as a way to
increase utilization of existing corporate systems and networks.
Software vendors are shipping applications for grids, such as
videostreaming, large file transmission and shared data access. And a number
of other induatries are ( energy, electronics and pharmaceutical)adding Grids
to their networks.
It is anticipated that these trends point to a growing demand for grid
computing on corporate networks.
The Gartner group claims that the technology to hook up fast computers to
attack a compute-intensive problem has been deployed in academic circles for
years, and because of the increase in the powwer and capability of the
computers today, the interest in is increasing.
In grid computing, a compute-intensive or data-intensive application is
processed by many distributed computer systems connected via a LAN or WAN.
Grids can range in size from a few computers to over a thousands of systems,
which can be PCs, Unix workstations or servers.
Scientists have used grids to solve problems in areas such as modeling
nuclear explosions, forecasting weather,gene sequencing and analyzing seismic
data.
Sun seems to be convinced that with a grid, utilization of systems
resources is far higher that a the typical 10%-20% seen on networks. In
addition, as the problems get task intensive, the grid helps capatlize the
idle power. This can result in either faster solutions or more power to attack
the challenge. Ford Motor uses a grid in the design of its auto
powertrain.
Avaki, one of the leaders in the Grid software arena, is now helping
pharmaceutical companies use Grid software to provide secure access to large
amounts of data stored across distributed systems. "Pharmaceutical companies
have research teams spread around the world, and they need to ensure that the
data being used by all their teams is current and consistent," says Tim
Yeaton, president of Avaki. "With our software, the data is grid-enabled. The
alternatives are using FTP, which is complex and expensive to deploy, or
setting up a separate Web site."
IBM has big plans to attach OGSA support in its Tivoli, DB2, WebSphere and
Storage Tank software. IBM is already shipping OGSA support in all of its
operating systems, including AIX and Linux. "In 2003, we see that the
financial industry, governments, life sciences, higher ed and the industrial
sector will be hot areas for grids," says Dan Powers, vice president of grid
strategy at IBM. "Towards the second half of 2003, when the standards come out
and products include them, that's when we'll see more general-purpose uses of
grids."
Platform, has had a management tools for distributed computing on the
market since 1992. Platform's. One of Platforms largest customers is JP Morgan
Chase.
Kontiki added a grid component to its suite of software, which provides
managed delivery of video and other large files across an enterprise
network.
DataSynapse has also joined the group of Grid vendors with its LiveCluster
software. A number of financial services firms, including Bank of America and
Abbey National Group, use LiveCluster to run compute-intensive risk analysis
and pricing programs over grids.
The Global Grid Forum has developed the Open Grid Services Architecture
(OGSA). The (OGSA) will make it easier for companies to incorporate grid
applications that work across heterogeneous networks and the Web.
The Globus Project's Globus Toolkit 3.0 is another application that will
help companies maximize their resources.
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