Welcome to the future - Grid Computing

Grid computing provides a way of sharing computer resources such as processing and storage capacity for solving massive computational problems. The resources may include a dedicated cluster in an organization's computer room, an unmanaged cluster of workstations in the next building, or potentially a home PC on the other side of the world.

Grid computing is the next evolution of enterprise technology architectures, and will furthermore revolutionize how businesses think about and manage their computing resources. More so than client/server or Internet computing, the technology will be more of a revolution in computing architectures and could spark a revival of the entire technology industry.

Perhaps a more accurate way to look at grid computing is to visualise all the systems in an enterprise working together to create a powerful virtual mainframe, giving an organisation unprecedented access and control over computing and data resources, not only within the network but also across the enterprise. The grid virtualises the underlying technology, so the user essentially sees one large computer.

Watch grid computing introduction video.

Imagine being able to cut the processing time of your physics experiments, or the calculation time of your mathematical simulations from days to just seconds.

Royal Dutch Shell created a grid infrastructure for its seismic interpretation applications that cuts the time needed to process seismic data while improving the quality of the data, thus allowing the company’s employees to focus upon key problems.

A short video describing the advantages that Grid computing can generate for businesses.


What problems can be solved using Grid Computing?

* clinical trial modelling
* nuclear engineering
* transport predictions
* financial hedging models
* climate prediction
* oil reservoir data analysis
* environmental modelling
* protein folding
* data mining of operational information
* and other complex simulations and analysis..

Grid computing is real, and it’s here today.

More resources on Grid Computing

Applications of Enterprise Grids
Grid computing helps make smarter business choices: An interview with Gregory Corgan, Executive Vice President, Worldwide Sales, Computer Associates (CA), to get an insight into CA's take on grid computing.