Grid computing is likely to find widespread mainstream
success, despite barriers that have so far limited its adoption to
technical circles, according to a new survey by IDC.
In the next four years, Western European grid server revenues
will amount to $1.8bn (£980m) in both commercial and technical
sectors, the company said.
The study, titled "The Western European Grid Computing Server
Market Opportunity", is an attempt to bring some definition to a
market which IDC admits is currently in its early stages.
Grid computing allows organisations to treat computing power as
a virtualised resource, which can be swapped as needed between
different departments or even rented from an outside supplier.
Early applications have included super-computers made up of
numerous clustered PCs and efforts in the scientific community,
particularly the CERN particle physics laboratory, to share
computing resources from institutions around the world.
From there the grid concept has spread into the commercial
sector, with companies such as IBM, Sun Microsystems, Oracle and
Hewlett-Packard promoting the concept as a way for companies to cut
costs.
Despite scepticism, grid computing is becoming a commercial
reality in Europe, IDC found.
The driving factor is a real interest in and demand for more
efficient and lower-cost computing, shown by the increasing number
of European companies going through a process of IT standardisation
and consolidation, according to Nathaniel Martinez, program manager
of IDC's European enterprise server group.
The company identified three distinct segments of the emerging
grid market: computing, data and optimisation.
Early commercial applications have centered on the pooling and
allocation of resources across different business services.
However, early adoption has been limited mainly to high-performance
computing, particularly large batch-oriented grids.
While confident that grids will become a commercial reality,
IDC's Martinez admitted that businesses are currently far from
convinced.
"Like past technologies, adoption will be highly dependent on
successful early adopter reference projects in the marketplace, the
perceived cost-benefit ratio of future adoption, and indeed, the
increased costs of late adoption," he said.
Among the many barriers preventing wider adoption of grids in
the enterprise are the lack of tools and commercial applications
running in a grid environment, and the lack of industry standards
allowing different suppliers' products to work together.
Without standardisation, companies will continue to think of
grids as requiring expensive technicians and services, IDC said;
this undermines their whole purpose - to be more efficient and save
money.
Companies also had cultural and organisational barriers to
sharing resources across business units, and were concerned over
security, IDC said.
An Oracle grid survey in September found that the UK is lagging
behind France and the Benelux countries when it comes to installing
grid technology, but UK IT managers are much more aware about the
capabilities of the technology and are outscoring their European
colleagues.
Only 22% of IT managers surveyed claimed to understand the
technology and most saw the technology as something discussed by
marketing professionals and the media, rather than having any
relevance for real-world computing.
Matthew Broersma writes for Techworld.com