Grid Meter » Still more questions than answers with Grid...

October 05, 2005 | Comments: (0)

Still more questions than answers with Grid...

TAGS: None

After attending the keynotes and several sessions at the first day of the enterprise program at GridWorld I'd love to report back with a clear insight as to where the Grid market is headed. However, that is not the case. One thing that became very clear early on is that there are still more questions than answers in this space.

And somewhat disturbingly they are the same age-old questions and general comments that I've heard over the course of the last several years.

You know the remarks... "Grid is a disruptive technology, the dividing line between Grid / SOA / Utility computing is blurry, Grids reduce cycle time, there is no clear definition between clusters and Grids, blah, blah blah..."

To be clear, this is certainly not a reflection of the event itself, but more of an observation on the nebulous Grid market. So what is going to break this redundant cycle?

One thing that was clearly missing yesterday was talk of applications, and again, to be fair, I wasn't present in all of the sessions. But I did not hear a good discussion of what's working in Grid environments, what isn't, and what are some of the metrics for measuring this. Those working in this space often categorize themselves in vertical markets, and these markets are defined by their applications.

When we talk of Grid, we often mention the recent enterprise computing trend of the transformation from vertically integrated silos to horizontally integrated, service-oriented systems in the same breath. Perhaps we should be doing the same at the higher levels of the "Grid stack". Instead of focusing on the uniqueness of the applications that define a market (vertical view), we should be examining the commonalities between them (horizontal view). I believe that with a better view of these commonalities we can better define the forces that will drive application integration in Grid environments and therefore accelerate Grid adoption.

One comment that really summed up the day for me I heard during the "What is the Software Licensing Model for Grids?" panel. In a nutshell the panelist said, "look, there are many ways to go about licensing software deployed in Grid environments and we've named several here, but most importantly, don't get in the way with pricing and licensing models right now, let the market grow."

To paraphrase Bob Dylan, if you have to remind people to get out of the new road if they can't lend a hand, then clearly, the times are still a-changin'.

Posted by Greg Nawrocki on October 5, 2005 07:20 AM

RATE THIS ARTICLE: