While 2002 may be a year to forget for the rest of the IT industry, it was
one to remember for Grid computing vendors.
Boosted by IBM’s embrace of Grid technology, Grid computing vendors saw
deployments soar this year.
The number of announced Grid deployments from private Grid vendors
(Avaki, DataSynapse, Entropia, Platform Computing and United Devices)
soared from 7 in 2001 to 26 in 2002, a growth rate of 270%.
The technology was given a major boost by Big Blue’s push into Grid
computing that began in August 2001, but it also helped to have the
right technology at the right time.
“I do think that the inimitable IBM PR machine, as well as their very
real technical contributions and financial commitments, have had a
significant impact on the visibility and acceptance of Grid concepts and
deployments within industry,” said Ian Foster, co-leader of the open
source Globus Project that has become the de facto standard for Grid
computing. “Of course, we should not downplay the major contributions of
the open source movement and the other small and large companies who are
pursuing competing or complementary approaches.”
“There has definitely been an uptick as the technology is now being more
widely accepted,” said Mark Roth of DataSynapse. “I think it’s more of a
realization that in this environment in which IT managers are tasked
with doing more with less, there is finally a solution.”
Ten-year-old Platform Computing remains the clear leader in the Grid
space, accounting for 13 of the 26 announced Grid deployments so far
this year.
But Avaki, Entropia and United Devices established themselves as
contenders this year, with 5, 4 and 3 announced deployments,
respectively, and UD is expected to announce another major deployment
soon.
“Entropia, Avaki, and UD seem to be gaining traction,” Foster
observed.
Grid’s growth appears to have continued throughout 2002, with 11
deployments in the first half of the year and 15 so far in the second
half.
“UD is seeing a significant amount of commercial interest in our
MetaProcessor solution, and many deals in the pipeline appear to be
accelerating,” said United Devices’ Paul Kirchoff. “I think the
traditional Grid value proposition, especially in a tough CapEx
environment, is causing research and IT professionals to look for
business levers that move the needle. Deploying HPC apps on
infrastructure you already own is a huge win if done correctly.”
Grid technology remains primarily a tool for compute-intensive R&D and
scientific applications, with all the deployments falling into areas
such as life sciences, financial services and scientific research. For
Grid to enter the IT mainstream, it will need applications that address
core business practices.
The industry made some strides in that direction this year. Platform
Computing, for example debuted Platform
Symphony, a transactional platform for the financial services
industry that was adopted by JP Morgan.
Avaki CTO and co-founder Andrew Grimshaw said his company is “seeing a
widening of the industries that are taking a good hard look at
Grids.”
Avaki has seen adoption in the life sciences, manufacturing, financial
services, and oil and gas industries, Grimshaw said, “but we believe
that Grids, and specifically data Grids, solve enterprise IT challenges
irrespective of industry. For instance, data Grids can be applied to a
range of data access challenges within an enterprise, such as wide-area
access to distributed data, multi-company data access for efficient
partner collaboration, and delivering distributed data for remote
processing.”
Grimshaw said IBM “has had a huge impact on commercial deployments. They
legitimized the field.” But academic and government deployments, many of
which were already in the pipeline, have been more affected by the
NSF-funded TeraGrid in the U.S. and the eSciences effort in the UK, he
said.
2003 could be another big year for Grid technology. A set of standards
emerging under the Open Grid Services Architecture effort could speed
adoption further and accelerate the development of Grid applications.
“Progress in Grids will be enabled by open standards, open software, and
open infrastructure,” Foster said. “OGSA is providing the open
standards, is being delivered via both open and commercial software, and
can be expected to provide a basis for more and more infrastructure,
both public and private.
“I expect OGSA to enable the Grid industry the way IP enabled the
Internet industry. We’re seeing tremendous enthusiasm and many public
statements of support for OGSA as a basis for commercial deployments and
interoperable commercial technologies.”
Dan Powers, IBM’s vice president of Grid Strategy, said, “When the
history of Grid is written, I believe people will look back and mark
2003 as one of the key development years because of the introduction of
Open Grid Services Architecture. … It’s the common framework that will
allow businesses to build Grids over a network using open standards to
enable heterogeneous operations.”