Comments on: Is grid relevant? Modern grid computing and today’s enterprise. http://cloudpul.se/posts/is-grid-relevant-modern-grid-computing-and-todays-enterprise Research, advisory and consulting services for cloud computing and big data Sun, 14 Nov 2010 11:59:14 -0600 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Rowland http://cloudpul.se/posts/is-grid-relevant-modern-grid-computing-and-todays-enterprise#comment-1 Rowland Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-1 Don't forget that the scalability issue in distributed computing has almost *always* been about making algorithms or similar computationally intensive codes execute faster. You'd write your codes that could either parallelise easily or pass onto a decent resource manager to farm out to a super computer or commodity cluster. Grid computing typically involves the sharing of organisational resources with other like-minded organisations - consider the US national labs that use Globus, or the ever-increasing EGEE grid hosted by CERN and other academic institutions across the EU. One of the problems businesses have with Grid computing are the security aspects, protection of IPR. At the same time, they want to reap the benefits of computation resources they would otherwise not have access to. Academia has not had so much of a problem since computation resources are purchased on public funds and would not eat into profits - not true for business who have to look at the bottom line. Reliability is an interesting issue, but like you said needs to be supported by the middleware *and* resource manager in question. Don’t forget that the scalability issue in distributed computing has almost *always* been about making algorithms or similar computationally intensive codes execute faster. You’d write your codes that could either parallelise easily or pass onto a decent resource manager to farm out to a super computer or commodity cluster.

Grid computing typically involves the sharing of organisational resources with other like-minded organisations – consider the US national labs that use Globus, or the ever-increasing EGEE grid hosted by CERN and other academic institutions across the EU.

One of the problems businesses have with Grid computing are the security aspects, protection of IPR. At the same time, they want to reap the benefits of computation resources they would otherwise not have access to. Academia has not had so much of a problem since computation resources are purchased on public funds and would not eat into profits – not true for business who have to look at the bottom line.

Reliability is an interesting issue, but like you said needs to be supported by the middleware *and* resource manager in question.

]]> By: sam http://cloudpul.se/posts/is-grid-relevant-modern-grid-computing-and-todays-enterprise#comment-2 sam Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000 #comment-2 I'd certainly agree that the "Traditional Grid" approaches that have been developed to meet the needs of academia and big research have not stood up to the needs of mainstream businesses very well. A new type of grid platform is required. Your point about academia and profits is a good one also. We used to joke that for the academics, software is expensive and people are cheap (i.e. grad students), but for businesses the opposite is the case. Funny but true! I’d certainly agree that the “Traditional Grid” approaches that have been developed to meet the needs of academia and big research have not stood up to the needs of mainstream businesses very well. A new type of grid platform is required.

Your point about academia and profits is a good one also. We used to joke that for the academics, software is expensive and people are cheap (i.e. grad students), but for businesses the opposite is the case. Funny but true!

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