Sun, ISVs Fire Off First Wave of Grid Software

For Sun, that software comes in the form of the N1 Grid Engine. Billed as applying a classical supercomputing-style grid approach, the software looks at diverse resources scattered around the world and harnesses them to ensure ample computing power to keep applications from sputtering. Like many grid-technology vendors, Sun has a dual approach, selling both directly and through a growing base of partners.

Meanwhile, IBM's grid strategy is to support solutions that combine the company's hardware with third-party software.

"Our focus has been in the grid ISV space, with [partners] like Platform Computing, United Devices and DataSynapse," says Steve Gordon, the executive in charge of IBM's grid-computing organization. "Those relationships are strong, getting stronger every day. They are at the core of all of this."

Those ISVs, which are the three big horsemen of the grid-software world, make the programs that turn standalone applications into grid-enabled code. Take DataSynapse's offering.

"GridServer makes sure that pieces of the application are allocated to be run on the grid," says Pat Aughavin, vice president of business development at the New York-based company. "We don't just divvy up work and send it out to be run and hope that it happens, but we monitor each of the pieces that are running and make sure that if there's an outage, we reallocate that work to other resources in our grid."

Similar functionality is delivered by the Grid MP platform, the distributed computing software offering from Austin, Texas-based United Devices. For its part, Platform Computing in Toronto fields two software packages: Load Sharing Facility (LSF) and Symphony. (Avaki, which used to be considered the other major grid ISV, has repositioned itself as a provider of enterprise information-integration software.) As for Hewlett-Packard, it's taking an ecumenical approach, riding many horses in the grid race.

"Grid is tied to a lot of areas inside the company," says Sara Murphy, HP's marketing manager for grid computing. "Our consulting and integration-services organizations work with the customers doing assessments and evaluations. They then pull in the appropriate grid ISVs."

HP also applies its OpenView software to grid solutions, markets the standards-based Globus Toolkit, offers enterprise grid consulting through its HP Services organization and sells pay-as-you-go utility computing time.