Grid computing advanced last week as IBM launched commercial support for firms using the Globus protocols running on AIX or Linux operating systems. The Globus grid computing protocols provide a framework that allows firms to build distributed server systems and to link into grids developed by outside partners.

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM vice president of technology and strategy said, "Grid computing lets firms take advantage of technology without dealing with the complexity." He said that grid computing is at a stage of development similar to that of the Internet eight to 10 years ago. "Researchers are already building grids, and commercial organisations are beginning to take notice," he added.

The Globus protocols are based on the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA), and both are open source technologies. "These protocols need to be open source because they need to run on every architecture," said Wladawsky-Berger.

Initially, commercial applications may be focused on compute-intensive tasks such as risk management analysis, processing vast amounts of data. Eventually grids will be used for more mainstream tasks, including transactional applications.

Among the most suitable applications are those that involve processing data on many separate systems. Grids may also be used in niche roles, such as combating denial of service (DoS) attacks. Currently, the main methods of countering such attacks are to host affected applications on additional server systems to increase capacity; or to host on server systems with different IP addresses. Grid computing could rapidly switch attacked applications to distant servers.

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