IBM has formalised five new grid services offerings
within its IBM Global Services and IBM Consulting Services groups
to extend the reach of grid computing beyond the realms of academia
and research.
The latest offerings are designed to help customers work with
IBM to assess and plan for grid computing deployments.
"It's five formal services offerings from IBM based on the
experiences that we've had with hundreds of customer engagements
around the world," said Dan Powers, IBM's vice president of grid
computing strategy.
Now that they are classified as "formal service offerings",
these services will be deployed "better and faster" than they had
been in the past, said Powers.
One such offering, called Grid Value at Work, helped convince
New York financial information publishing company Bowne to embark
on a three and a half month pilot grid computing project that ended
in August last year, IBM claimed.
Grid Value at Work includes assessment software that shows
executives the return on investment and cost savings they can
expect from adopting a grid application architecture. IBM services
staff enter data about a customer's computing resources and
workloads, and the software provides the analysis.
"It's really a detailed financial analysis that not only the
chief information officer would love, but the chief financial
officer would love it as well," said Powers.
During its pilot project, Bowne worked with IBM and software
supplier DataSynapse to grid-enable a statement-processing
component of its Vax-based Bowne Integrated Typesetting System
application. This allowed the software to be run in a distributed
fashion on a handful of Windows desktops and servers when those
systems were not being used fully .
Even though Bowne did save money by using existing equipment to
run the grid-enabled application, the main benefit of the grid was
its flexibility, said Ruth Harenchar, the company's CIO and senior
vice president.
The ability to tap existing resources during busy times holds
particular appeal for a seasonal business like Bowne's, she added.
Each quarter, the company is deluged with work as companies rush to
report their March, June, September and December financial
results.
Bowne now plans to grid-enable a larger module of its
typesetting system, and Harenchar is optimistic about the company's
first tentative steps into grid computing. "The initial indications
are that it's very much worth the effort," she said.
IBM's new offerings are:
- Grid Value at Work: The total cost of ownership assessment
service
- Business Impact of Technology: For assessing the impact of grid
computing on business processes
- Grid Solution Deployment: For planning and designing grid
deployments
- Autonomic Computing Readiness Engagement: Helps plan systems
management with IBM's self-configuring "autonomic" computing
systems
- Autonomic Computing Design and Implementation, which is used
for deploying autonomic systems
Robert McMillan writes for IDG News Service