Grid computing is not a new subject in this space. But in this article, Om Malik chose to concentrate on the role of one of the leaders of this *new* way of computing, Ian Foster.
What Linus Torvalds, cocreator of the Linux operating system, is to the open-source movement, Mr. Foster, 43, is to the world of grid computing. From his paper-infested office at Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, where he is a senior scientist and head of the distributed systems lab, Mr. Foster champions grid technology. Today, he says, grids are where the Web was in 1991 or 1992 -- more academic curiosity than commercial venture. But, just as the Internet grew from a collection of small academic networks to a humongous octopus spreading its tentacles around the world, Mr. Foster predicts today's minigrids will grow into a huge global grid, a transcontinental processing pool engaged in all sorts of complex tasks, like designing and testing semiconductors and decoding the human genome. Applications like customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM) will be run from such a network.
This is ambitious, but is there a market for this technology?
Market research firm Grid Technology Partners estimates that the worldwide grid-computing industry will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 276 percent, topping more than $4.1 billion by 2005, when IT applications like CRM and enterprise resource planning will begin to be run on the grid.
Given that the issues of security and resource sharing have to be resolved, that projection seems overly optimistic. Take, for example, CRM software. In grid computing, the software would reside on the grid, but it hasn't been determined how the data would be transmitted securely over the network. "Currently, the security is not acceptable for mission-critical and enterprise computing, but we are hoping that in the next five years, all such issues will be resolved," says Mr. Scaglia of HP.
These are interesting projections. But let's look at the size of the market for industrial companies today.
Ford Motor, BMW, Boeing, Motorola, Novartis, Pacific Life, Saab, and Synopsys are using minigrids, buying software and services from firms like Entropia, IBM, Platform Computing, Sun, Think Dynamics, and United Devices. Still, not much money is being made. Total sales of grid-related products and services, nearly all of it for experimental projects, will be a meager $180 million in 2002, according to Grid Technology Partners.
It seems that we are far away from the $4 billion a year forecasted by the Grid Technology Partners research company. I didn't know this company, so I visited their Web site. (Here is the link.) Their latest report on the subject will cost you $2,995 for either a hard-copy or a single user PDF file. Ouch!
Source: Om Malik, Red Herring Magazine, October 11, 2002
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