By Andy McCue, 31 May 2006 12:20
NEWS
Fewer than one in 10 businesses is planning to adopt grid computing because of concerns about cost, complexity and security, according to a survey of IT managers.
Out of the 100 IT managers quizzed, 88 per cent said their board of directors don't see grid computing as a priority.
Only eight per cent said they had already rolled out or planned to adopt grid computing, with a third of all respondents saying the technology is too complex and too expensive.
A third of IT managers also expressed concerns over security because grid computing can involve running applications across businesses and allowing external third-party suppliers to access the pooled computing power.
Early adopters of grid computing include universities and large pharmaceutical companies, which pool the computing power of a cluster of servers to process large amounts of data.
But Peter Critchley, strategy director at Morse, which commissioned the survey, said grid computing is being held back by confusion and myths surrounding the technology.
He said in a statement: "Most businesses will spend thousands of pounds buying new servers but then have their heads in the sand when it comes to getting full use of them. Businesses commonly waste a significant portion of their IT budget because they aren't fully utilising their servers."
The survey was carried out by Vanson Bourne.
Comments
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1. John Taylor
Grid computing need not be expensive or complicated. The real key is how you Manage the Data and this requires that you get your "back-end" storage right. Most suppliers of Servers are only too happy to provide the SAN / NAS / Clustered Storage technology but don't fully understand the ramifications of getting this wrong.
If you work with a top Data Management, (don't like the word "storage"!) specialist supplier and don't leave it up to your server supplier it can cost a lot less than you may think and be very much easier to implement than expected.
If you get it wrong -- it is very wrong --especially if you are employing virtualised Server technology such as VMWare and will cost very dearly!
Tools such as Store-Age and Troika in multi vendor array SAN's make it much easier.
There are specialised products even for the smaller organisation with tools such as Intransa iSCSI multiple controller SAN's.
There are many specialised Data Management solutions available now to make Grid Comouting a better proposition but there really is not a single vendor solution that is really practically proven.
So go to a specialist!
2. Bert Armijo
Grids don't need to be complex.
The view that grids are complex is based on old technology. Grids can, and should, be beautifully simple.
New technologies have brought standard web apps onto grids - no code rewrite required. The apps become easier to deploy, manage and scale as a result.
We've had users bring up a grid AND get apps running in just a few days.