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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / OCTOBER 6, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 40
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Systems/Enterprise:
IBM'S GRID COMPUTING PUSH
CONTINUES
By William Fellows For the451.com
IBM has added two new Grid computing packages to the 17 it already offers,
which combine IBM technology, third-party apps and hardware, and most
importantly, IBM Global Services. These are the first packaged Grid offerings
from the company to include ISV applications, and IBM says it is now seeing
repeat engagements. It's moving Grid technology up the enterprise stack.
Impact Assessment
The Message
IBM has two new packaged Grid offerings. They're the first to include ISV
applications, and IBM says it's now experiencing its first repeat
engagements.
Competitive Landscape
Many ISVs and major vendors –- including Sun and HP –- are enthusiastically
market-making, but IBM appears the most commercially focused, engaged and
organized.
The451 Assessment
IBM is moving Grid computing up the enterprise stack. Getting to the
application layer is an important advance as the industry seeks to brings
commercial apps -– and value -– to Grids. IBM forecasts "hypergrowth" for the
sector next year, and its target of doubling its Grid revenue will set an
interesting benchmark for other vendors.
Technology and partners Both new packages are in the business analytics
space,
one of five sectors across which IBM's 19 packages are organized.
The Customer Insight offering is targeted at retail banking. It combines
SAS
Credit Scoring, DataSynapse and Avaki middleware and systems, and IBM
consulting, design and implementation. IBM claims it was instrumental in
getting SAS to pony up for a Global Grid Forum membership and says that it
will leverage SAS's own Grid middleware, MP Connect, in future.
The Risk Management and Compliance package is aimed at financial markets.
It
supports KMV, Algorithmics, SunGard, Fair Isaac and SAS applications;
DataSynapse GridServer middleware; xSeries and the TotalStorage Virtualization
engine, and IBM services. SunGard is now the owner of Reech Capital, a risk
management ISV that developed its applications on a Grid, and it's this asset
that SunGard brings to the package.
IBM has anointed United Devices and Avaki as master resellers –- a middle
tier
in IBM's PartnerWorld partner hierarchy. They join Platform and DataSynapse.
Joint sales and marketing activity beckons.
Meanwhile, IBM has also revealed six new Grid customers, including Hewitt,
Morgan Stanley and T-Systems in the commercial space.
Strategy
What's important here is not the addition of two new packages per se, but
the
fact each for the first time brings an ISV application into the product mix,
demonstrating, IBM says, how Grid activity and interest is moving up the
stack.
Also new are its first repeat engagements, IBM says, with customers
configuring a Grid using a stack and services that IBM has already implemented
elsewhere. This demonstrates traction, the company asserts.
IBM's Grid revenue stream isn't known –- "many millions" is what the
company
is able to offer. It expects the sector to move into "hypergrowth" next year,
and has a target of doubling its Grid revenue. Grid computing technologies are
moving 'from rocket science to business service' in 2004, as the451 explains
in its in a new 451 Special Report.
IBM says it has more than 100 staff on its core Grid team, plus the
associated
sales force in all territories and Grid-related development attached to all
product units.
It claims to have more than 100 Grid engagements on the go at any one time
and
to have already completed more than 100 Grid engagements. IBM says financial
companies are getting somewhat more boastful about their use of Grids, while
industrial users remain as secretive as ever because of competitive
reasons.
Competition
Sun has announced its first "packaged" Grid offerings in two vertical
industries. It claims several thousand instances of its Grid Engine in use,
although there's no real comparison with IBM, since many are running on a
single cluster, and Sun has not talked much publicly about specific commercial
engagements.
HP continues to focus on UDC, the center of its current Grid activity. It
has
got a handful of users and is targeted primarily at server consolidation. HP
has talked a lot about its Grid Resource Topology Designer and SmartFrog,
which it says enable users to start experimenting with Grids, although it
can't yet point to specific engagements. It also has a Globus toolkit for its
HPC systems and partnerships with Platform, Avaki and United Devices.
Many of the Grid ISVs/IHVs are aligned by vertical industries, and IBM is
already partnering with most of them. They're all enthusiastically
market-making, but IBM appears to be the most commercially focused, engaged
and organized in the space.
Courtesy http://www.the451.com
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