IBM Shifts Grid Computing Plans Into High Gear

A top executive at the computer giant offered a glimpse of the company's strategy during a keynote at the recent PC Expo conference in New York, noting that several technologies, including Linux, will play major roles in next-generation infrastructure.

Nicholas Donofrio, IBM's senior vice president in charge of research,a $5 billion-per-year operation,said the company is working feverishly to bring grid computing to the fore and has developed an in-house system.

Grid technology is the application of resources from many computers in a network to a single problem at the same time.

At the heart of the evolving model are supercomputer clusters that form super networks and can be dedicated to specific solutions.

IBM is developing its own "intra grid" by putting together a solution that will enable IBMers to share and develop information across the globe using a single gridded supercomputing system, said Donofrio.

Earlier this year, IBM said it had been tapped by the U.S. Department of Energy to establish a grid computing platform for the agency and would start the solution with two supercomputers and high-end storage.

A key component of IBM's technology offerings under the grid computing umbrella is its eLiza "self-healing" computer initiative, which industry sources believe will sit at the heart of grid computing management.

Meanwhile, solution providers are getting into the game.

"For the past few years, the solution to many IT problems has been to buy more hardware or more expensive software," said Steve Salkeld, director of business development at Platform Computing, a Toronto-based software solution provider focusing on grid architecture.

"You have these huge, expensive infrastructures," Salkeld said. "Some IT guys are saying, 'I'm not sure I'm getting what I should out of this infrastructure.' "

Salkeld, whose company teams with IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and other vendors, said that those partners "really see a big services opportunity in giving some extra value to their customers."

Earlier this year, when IBM opened a grid computing center in France, Platform Computing was invited to demonstrate some of its solutions. More recently, Platform Computing worked with a customer in the life-sciences space to create a system the client uses to "move its engineering workload from one city to another based on peak demands," said Salkeld.

Privately held Platform Computing's annual revenue last year reached $46 million, up from the $273,000 it reported in its first year of business in 1993.

While financial and accounting news is grabbing the headlines, IBM is quietly leaving little doubt about its emphasis on a grid computing strategy,a tactic that could play to the vendor's strengths: high-end servers, middleware and services.

In an internal QandA posted on IBM's research Web site, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, vice president of technology and strategy at IBM's server group, said the company is now equating grid computing with other technologies backed by the vendor in recent years.

"The key decision that IBM made as a business with the Internet and Linux, and is making now with grid computing, is to be at the vanguard of making these technologies break through to the commercial world," Wladawsky-Berger said. "We don't want to sit back, wait until it happens and then join the parade."

Sun and HP are also in varying stages of launching grid computing initiatives.

Last year, HP said it would develop its HP Utility Data Center (UDC) to extend grid computing for commercial use. The UDC segments the pool of computing power into varying levels of security and allows for dynamic allocation of resources without compromising that security, according to HP.

Sun, which is positioning its software,including the Sun Grid Engine line,said one partner, Sony Devices Europe, was able to install a Sun grid computing solution in two days.

"Grid computing is really a catch-all that is driving the industry right now," Salkeld said.