Grid vendors target corporate applications

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.

Several software vendors are shipping general-purpose applications of grids such as videostreaming, large file transmission and shared data access. Meanwhile, a growing number of companies - in industries such as pharmaceuticals, electronics, auto manufacturing, energy and financial services - are piloting grid projects across their backbone networks.

These trends point to a growing demand for grid computing on corporate networks during 2003.

"The technology to hook up fast computers to attack a compute-intensive problem has been deployed in academic circles for years," says Alex Linden, research director for emerging trends and technology at Gartner. "The current surge in interest in grid computing is due to the availability of thousands-of-GHz PCs and Fast Ethernet connections to string them together. . . . One could argue that the average company has a few terahertz of computing power idling during the nighttime."

In grid computing, a compute-intensive or data-intensive application is processed by many distributed computer systems connected via a LAN or WAN. Today's grids range in size from dozens to hundreds of individual systems, which can be PCs, Unix workstations or servers. Most corporations deploy grids on their private IP networks rather than the Internet.

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.

"There are two big benefits to deploying a grid," says Peter Jeffcock, group marketing manager for grid computing at Sun. "The first one is obvious, and it is to dramatically increase utilization of systems -compute, network and storage - that you've already got. Typically, systems run at 10% or 20% utilization. With a grid, that can be at 90% utilization. The other benefit is to be able to use more compute power to attack a more challenging problem or to solve a problem quicker."

Companies traditionally have used open source middleware such as the Globus Toolkit 2.2 or the Sun One Grid Engine to manage grid applications, schedule network resources and track system utilization. The free Sun One Grid Engine has been deployed on more than 6,500 grids during the last two years, Sun officials say.

But now vendors including Sun and several start-ups are offering enterprise versions of their grid middleware. Sun last year began shipping an enterprise edition of its Sun One Grid Engine that handles policy setting and scheduling resources. The enterprise edition has attracted customers such as Ford Motor, which uses a grid in the design of its automotive powertrain, and Sun, which has 7,000 systems connected via a grid for semiconductor design.