Grid Meter » What's Microsoft got up its sleeves for Grid Computing in '06?

January 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)

What's Microsoft got up its sleeves for Grid Computing in '06?

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Microsoft has, for quite sometime, been a great unknown in Grid computing. An early supporter of the Globus Toolkit, they have since been rather quiet in the areas of technical and high performance computing, until late last year.

The Bill Gates keynote at Supercomputing 2005 in Seattle was basically a "here we are" type of announcement. Gates primarily focused on his vision for compute Grids (to be expected, since it was at the Supercomputing event), but he also highlighted a vision for scientific workflow and was quick to point out that Microsoft was a driving force behind XML and Web Services standards.

The Financial Services market was one of the first to embrace Grid computing as a useable tool for analysis. They remain one of the primary drivers. The fact is the reference standard application and data user interface for this market is still the spreadsheet, which, can be loosely translated to Microsoft Excel. While the practicality of using the interpreted math engine of a spreadsheet to perform mass calculations is suspect, I doubt were going to get the average Financial analyst to start parallel programming in C. A Grid driven version of Microsoft Excel would indeed be a killer app.

There have long since been many smaller players actively providing Grid and Grid-like products for Windows operating systems. Digipede for example, has recently received accolades for its Digipede Network Grid computing solutions for the Microsoft .NET platform. It is not hard for one to imagine Microsoft leveraging these companies in any way its massive bankroll desires. We'll possibly start to see some of this MS Grid ecosystem unfold in the first half of '06, when Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 ships (MS already has already announced a partnership with Platform around the release.

Tony Hey and Fabrizio Gagliardi both joined Microsoft last year. Tony is an internationally recognized leader in parallel computing and has been a key driver in Web Services standards, especially as they relate to Grid computing. Fabrizio is taking leave from CERN where he served as Project Director for EGEE, a pan European Grid effort for e-science. No shortage of talent at Microsoft -- but they are excellent additions for extra Grid credibility and expertise.

Does Microsoft "get" Grid computing beyond compute grids and cycle scavenging? Will Microsoft support and embrace the standards that have been so important to the evolution of Grid computing thusfar, or will they simply redefine Grid as they see fit?

Many questions still remain, and admittedly the above are a fairly disjoint collection of observations with no real central theme. So how does this warrant a position on a 2006 watch list? Five hundred pound gorilla jokes aside, Microsoft obviously has something brewing in the area of Grid computing, and they have a history of proving they can't be ignored.

Posted by Greg Nawrocki on January 13, 2006 05:19 AM

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