The Grid Pushes Towards the Mainstream - Page 2

The Grid Is Key For Web Services
Because of the cross-environment nature of Web Services core languages like XML and SOAP, many of its players are seeing the grid as a way to serve up services without the customer getting worried about the details.

"There are three critical ways that the grid helps," said IBM VP of Technology Strategy Irving Wladawsky-Berger. "The first is standards. The second is that systems must become self-managing, and the third is access to services. If I'm making a pizza all by myself, it may take a lot of time. But if I go to the pizza store, then it's not that complicated. Sometimes I like to make the dough; sometimes the sauce and I can go and buy those things. In that I become the kitchen integrator. As there is an agreement on the protocols the important part here is that you the users can access the tools be that virtual service it may be in your own department or all the way out in a utility on the grid."

Sun Microsystems , which released its Grid Engine software in September 2000 says it plans on advancing its Web Services strategy with it. Sun's current Grid Engine customers include Ford, Caprion Pharmaceuticals, BP, Cognigen Corporation, Motorola, Sony Semiconductor and Devices Europe.

IBM is involved in several grid computing projects. For example, In November 2001, IBM announced it is building a computing grid for the University of Pennsylvania designed to bring advanced methods of breast cancer diagnosis and screening to patients. Big Blue is not shy about saying its grid-enhanced solutions help cut workload management and dynamic reallocation of recourses.

The company says its clients are very interested in managing their resources more effectively given the wake-up call that many businesses faced after the events of September 11.

"Enterprise is looking for resiliency after 9-11 as a way to push workload or change functions without too much human intervention," said Hawk.

But, perhaps one of the best examples of how enterprise is driving the grid is in the arena of gaming.

Grid for Gamers
Grid computing is also establishing itself in one of the Internet's main moneymaking business models: online gaming.

The market is currently only a small percentage of that industry, though it is growing. The Korean massively multi-player online roleplaying game (MMORPG) Lineage boasts more than 2.5 million subscribers, and EverQuest, which is notorious for players who use online auction sites to sell characters and equipment from the game world, is reported to have a virtual economy that makes its setting the 77th largest economy in the world.

The Butterfly Grid is the first grid system with the capability of processing online video games across a multicast network of server farms, allowing the most efficient utilization of computing resources for high-performance 3D immersive game-worlds

Its no surprise that the grid is being heralded as a perfect storm for online gaming. A recent survey on the Internetnews.com Web site ranked online gaming as the number one driver of growth of commercial grid computing

"I wouldn't say the grid is changing the landscape of the Internet as much it is exploiting it," said Hawk. Now that there is the backbone of the Web, the Internet 2 and expansion of bandwidth, the key here is to lash together these systems and help it evolve to its next level."

Grid Computing Planet editor Paul Shread contributed to this report.