Real-time computing. Real-time news.
September 25, 2006
Getting Beyond the Compute Grid: The Challenge of 'Grid 2.0'
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 All »
Early adopters of Grid computing have indicated that many are looking for ways to move beyond the use of grids specifically for computational tasks. They want to eliminate silos and organize IT around shared resources, simplify access to data, and provide a single, consistent view of the business for the entire enterprise. The challenge they face is essentially getting "beyond the compute grid," a topic we've looked at in a number of reports.
Grid computing supports the key functional drivers required to achieve these goals, including virtualization, service-oriented architecture (SOA) and utility delivery models. To do this, grids need to be absorbed into the enterprise infrastructure itself and not used only as a stand-alone computational engine. In such a strategic role, grids must support automated data, storage and service activities just as capably as handling computational tasks. These challenges are being addressed by what is being called "Grid 2.0."
If "Grid 1.0" is principally concerned with the virtualization, aggregation and sharing of compute resources, Grid 2.0 is focused on the virtualization, aggregation and sharing of all compute, storage, network and data resources. It is both service-oriented -- uses Web services and provides access to IT as a service -- and automated.
Grid Adoption
The 451 Group has tracked more than 250 early adopters of Grid computing and related technologies in the 451 Grid Adoption Research Service (GARS) and has developed a model to track deployment progress:
- Level 5 -- Enterprise-wide grids, SOA, shared internal utility, outsourced utility.
- Level 4 -- Linked grids, within or between departments and with multiple applications.
- Level 3 -- Siloed grids: single grid, or grids in multiple departments that aren't linked.
- Level 2 -- Single application running.
- Level 1 -- Proofs of concept, trials.
This is not necessarily a sequential deployment path. Plenty of the organizations that 451 analysts have tracked are at level 2 or 3 and are not expecting to evolve through levels 4 and 5. Once organizations begin to link grids, their use can be thought of as relatively mature. At this stage, grids are well understood and often no longer the responsibility of a core R&D team. Once early adopters reach level 4, there are a range of level 5 strategic IT objectives that can be supported on top or outsourced.
Grid 1.0 usage is mostly at levels 1 through 3, and Grid 2.0 activities characterize levels 4 and 5. Financial services, pharmaceutical, electronic design automation, oil and gas, manufacturing and telecom vertical markets were the earliest adopters of grids. The applications they were and are using are primarily high-performance computing (HPC), embarrassingly parallel and batch-oriented in nature. Deployments are typically limited to one or two applications using traditional Grid middleware/schedulers. Culturally, they are very line-of-business oriented and in reality are mostly at level 2.
Grid vendors are seeking ways to expand beyond initial application beachheads. They are seeking additional early adopters within vertical markets beyond the early adopters, as well as application uses "downstream" of HPC.
In the Grid 2.0 era, use is extending across all verticals including retail, customer record management, insurance, travel, transport and government. Business intelligence, text analysis and search are some of the additional application tasks being supported on grids. Existing applications and application servers are also being deployed onto Grid-enabled containers without requiring prior knowledge of the infrastructure, and legacy applications are being wrapped for grids. Additional vendors are supplying tools to solve problems that are "beyond the compute grid," while existing Grid vendors are diversifying to other markets and activities. Culturally, top-down, centralized approaches are driven by the CxO office and compliance is a key concern. The reality is that grids are being used to support new models such as shared internal utilities services.
Article Tools
Share Options
(Digg, Technorati, more)
