Research Journal of Science & IT Management - RJSITM - The ...

have to contemplate whether they are going to get some
business value out of it or not. Our reading of various
articles gives us an impression that technology is mature
enough to move out of research phase and ready to roll into
industry, but suitable only for industries that need enormous
computational power and perform complex mathematical
operations. Grid computing may be a natural fit for
aerospace, financial services and petroleum industries.
Go Slow
Grid computing is still in experimental stage and
people are exploring the technology in various directions. It
will not be prudent to make huge commitment based on
early trends. It has seen observed that often technologies
change the course and move in different direction, which
was not thought of in early stages. Moreover as the concept
and standard of Grid Computing is still evolving and such
evolving standard means companies have to constantly
upgrade the technology, the company might not have
enough resources to cope with it. Therefore, the companies
should follow a go-slow policy to implement Grid
Computing.
Pick a partner not a product
As grid computing is gaining attention from
corporate world, many small firms are coming up with new
products. However quality of the products and after sales
services must be evaluated carefully before choosing a
product. We rather suggest that it would be very important
to choose a right partner rather than a product. This
approach can be handy as the technology is still evolving.
Companies must be able to upgrade their existing
technologies in line with evolving standards. A vendor who
is committed to the technology can be of real value in this
case.
Check Compatibility
The biggest challenge for grid computing is that
many existing applications are not compatible with grid
technology. In other words it means that if application is not
written for multi processing, it requires significant effort to
get those applications on the grid. It is very important that
while doing cost benefit analysis; companies factor in the
cost of modifying the applications to make them compatible
with grid technology.
Manage Change
Grid computing is a paradigm shift in the way
people used resources and thus it is certain to bring
enormous changes in people’s work life. This enormous
change has to be managed in order to realize the full
potential of the technology. Though resources belong to the
company, departmental view of personal ownership is hard
to shake. Thus it requires significant effort from
management to adjust the mindset of the company. This is
critical for the enterprise wide success of the grid
computing.
FUTURE SCOPE OF GRID
According to an estimate by Grid Technology
Partners, a firm that specializes in grid computing, total
worldwide market for grid computing is expected to touch
$8 billion by end of 2008. Gartner research report says grid
computing is one of the few emerging technologies that will
transform enterprise computing over the next 10 years. Thus
the question is not whether we will be using grid in future;
the question is how we will be using grid in future.
On Demand Computing
Information Technology (IT) as an integral part of
a business cannot be an exception. On
demand computing is a model in which computing resources
are made available to the users as needed. Because an
enterprise's demand on computing resources can vary
drastically from one time to another, maintaining sufficient
resources to meet peak requirements can be costly. Thus if
company needs exceptionally high computing power for
short period of time, it can get it from vendors like IBM and
pay based on the computing power used. The same concept
can be applied for applications and network storage. Thus
combination of web services, grid computing and open
architecture will help IT gain advantage from economies of
scale. This also means that over a period of time companies
may substantially reduce their fixed cost in IT and reduce
the total cost of ownership. This also means that IT staff
becomes more of a broker between company and vendors
thus significantly changing their role.
Global Grid
Grid computing holds excellent promise as the next
generation of the shift from proprietary to open based
computing architecture. It is the next level of eliminating the
complexities of dependencies. This is how we envision a
more promising application of on-demand technology. The
computing power on PCs is mostly unutilized and hence
concept of applying grid is a possibility. Grid computing can
be of great value to students, individual researchers,
entrepreneurs and professionals. As a student we come
across situations where we need access to very expensive
software but the state is not willing to pay the huge licensing
fees, especially in case of public universities. What if you
are an entrepreneur and you need access to a data warehouse
that contains critical information about your target
customers. Imagine a researcher who needs access to a large
amount of processing power for a highly specialized
research project. In the current computing environment, it is
not possible for these individuals to reach their goals
without a huge corporate or government sponsorship. Now
imagine if the university can go to a website and purchase
the pricey software for 12 students every Wednesday from
5:00 to 6:30 pm. What if the entrepreneur could access the
data warehouse for fifteen minutes and download the
information he/she needs. What is the researcher could tap
into the grid for a couple of hour’s everyday to perform his
calculations at 600 GHz. Though this may sound day
dreaming, the apt combination of web services, grid
computing and open source architecture can make it happen.
A global grid connecting computing resources all over the
world accessible through internet is the ultimate destination
proponents of grid computing should strive for!
www.theinternationaljournal.org > RJSITM: Volume: 01, Number: 08, June-2012 Page 22