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October 4, 2001

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Getting on the Grid

Vendors rake in big bucks from distributed computing projects

In Brief

High-level news at a glance

WebSphere Portal. IBM has announced plans to integrate collaborative functions of the Lotus K-station portal into its WebSphere Portal Server. The first phase of integration will be complete in Q4 2001. The new portal framework will use the K-station interface for front-end portal functions.

Itanium E-Business. BEA Systems Inc. and Intel will collaborate on a global project to optimize BEA WebLogic e-business software for the 64-bit Itanium processor line and IA-32 platforms. The joint engineering and marketing alliance will also work to improve existing BEA products for Intel's Xeon processors.

Compaq on Demand. Compaq Computer Corp. has launched Computing on Demand, a combination of technology and service offerings for enterprise customers. The company said its new program reflects its expanded focus on IT services and solutions. On Demand customers can select from varying levels of service and support when purchasing Compaq servers, storage systems, and PCs.

SAS CRM. SAS Institute Inc. and IBM have formed a strategic alliance to offer industry-specific analytic CRM solutions, initially for the financial services and telecommunications sectors. As part of the alliance, the two companies will integrate SAS solutions with IBM's DB2 Universal Database and middleware.

Imagine a biotechnology firm being able to distribute and analyze complex molecular structure data - a job requiring immense microprocessor power - or a brokerage firm performing mathematical analysis of moving share prices, all without an expensive mainframe tucked away in a back room. That is the promise of "Grid" computing.

Currently, most Web servers only use about 10 percent of their processing power, while PCs use about 2 percent. In a Grid environment, computers connected to the Internet would be able to share storage and processing power while collaborating on large computing tasks. While still in an early stage of development, the Grid concept has some pretty appealing implications for business intelligence (BI).

"Figuring out ways to build networks for some sort of distributed computing interests people because of the potential to leverage low cost, relatively small devices," said William Zachmann, vice president at Meta Group.

How the idea will be sold to businesses is a question that technology giants such as IBM and Sun Microsystems, and specialty start-ups like Entropia Inc., are figuring out as they develop ways to actually make it happen.

IBM recently signed a $53 million deal with the National Science Foundation to build a powerful computing Grid that will let thousands of scientists around the country share resources in life sciences, climate modeling, and other critical disciplines. IBM is also selling technology to several centers working on a national Grid in the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, Sun has made its Grid Engine Software for Unix an open-source project. And Microsoft just shelled out $1 million to an open-source Grid computing project called Globus, to fund research on putting Grid tools into its own products such as Windows and .NET Web services software.

While the focus of Grid computing has stayed within the research community, there are some companies - Pfizer Inc., BMW Group, GlaxoSmithKline, and Ericsson to name a few - already exploring ways to use the technology.

Mike Nelson, director for Internet Technology and Strategy at IBM, said the most likely candidates for Grid use are businesses in computing-intensive industries such as environmental sciences, drug design, and material sciences.

"This is simply a way to better utilize computers and storage systems," Nelson said.

— Amber Howle

Amber Howle (amberstar@earthlink.net) is a freelance technology and business writer based in San Francisco.

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