Over the last few years we have seen grid computing evolve from a niche technology associated with scientific and technical computing, into a business-innovating technology that is driving increased commercial adoption. Grid deployments accelerate application performance, improve productivity and collaboration, and optimize the resiliency of the IT infrastructure. By accelerating application performance, companies can more quickly deliver business results; achieving greater productivity, faster time to market, and increased customer satisfaction.
Grid technology also provides the ability to store, share and analyze large volumes of data, ensuring that people have access to information at the right time, which can improve decision making, employee productivity and collaboration. Grid technology improves resource utilization and reduces costs, while maintaining a flexible infrastructure that can cope with changing business demands, yet remain reliable, resilient and secure.
At its core, grid is about infrastructure virtualization, of both information and workload. In non-grid environments, existing infrastructures are very much “siloed;” resources are dedicated to applications and information. Many such dedicated infrastructures exist for common applications such as HR, Payroll, etc. and for data/information mining purposes. System response is limited by server capacity – and access to the data stored. It is very difficult to dynamically respond to new requirements, as a new infrastructure would be required, inefficiencies would predominate, and full utilization across the many silos would be difficult to achieve.
In a grid environment, resources are virtualized to create a pool of assets. Workload is spread across servers and data can be seamlessly retrieved. By separating applications and information from the infrastructure they run on, and providing this abstract, “virtualized” view, a new level of infrastructure flexibility can be achieved. Infrastructures can now dynamically adapt to business requirements, instead of the other way around. Resources are more fully utilized, resulting in decreased infrastructure costs, reduced processing time, increased responsiveness and faster time-to-market.
