Grid computing starts to make waves

Advocates of grid computing have denied the technology is failing to spark customer interest after a survey published last month said 88 percent of firms did not regard the technology as a priority.

The survey of 100 UK IT directors also revealed that just eight percent of firms had adopted or planned to adopt grid technology, while two thirds of respondents believed grids were too expensive or too complicated.

But Roy Illsey of analyst firm Butler Group insisted that despite low adoption rates, interest in grid computing is beginning to climb.

Improvements to many vendors’ middleware platforms are making it easier for companies to integrate applications with grid environments and this is encouraging acceptance of the grid model, Illsey argued in a recent report.

Tim Payne of infrastructure software vendor Oracle agreed that improvements to middleware are making it far easier for firms to deploy enterprise grids. “The major inhibitors in the past used to be concerns over manageability and ease of installation, but we are addressing that with investments in new software,” he said.

Payne said that Oracle had sponsored analyst firm Quocirca to research firms’ readiness for grids and had found interest is growing. “If you look at adoption of blade servers, which are a key component of many grids, we find 63 percent of firms have either adopted or are going to adopt the technology,” he added.

Improvements to hardware are also reducing the complexity of grid computing, according to Sun’s Paul Leonard. “It used to be a complex undertaking when you had to build racks of servers and link them up yourself,” he admitted. “But now we are delivering pre-configured builds that are reducing a lot of the complexity.”

Clive Longbottom of analyst Quocirca said some firms may be confused about the definition of grids – and as a result, surveys might indicate that adoption rates are lower than they really are. “If you are talking about enterprise-wide grids then adoption is low,” he said. “But if you are looking at what we call constrained grids, where firms are using smaller virtualised server clusters to help guarantee performance and availability, then we are seeing a lot of interest.”

Peter Critchley, strategy director at Morse, agreed adoption rates are possibly higher than the research suggests, as many firms are undertaking internal grid projects, such as deploying clustered virtual servers, without necessarily referring to them as grids. However, he maintained that the failure of infrastructure vendors to clearly explain grid computing’s costs and its business benefits is hampering adoption of the technology.

Oracle denied that it deserved such criticism, however. It said that customer references demonstrate measurable benefits from the technology. “One of our customers, Trader Media, has set up an enterprise grid that is running its web sites and it believes it is five times more cost-effective than a traditional datacentre,” said Payne.

However, Leonard at Sun admitted that traditionally grid computing had been a technology-led sale, focusing on high-tech manufacturing, academic and pharmaceutical environments. “As grids have moved into the business arena the messaging hasn’t necessarily changed as quickly [as required],” he said.

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