Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Clouds are the newest evolutionary step of Grid market offerings and provide new
opportunities and challenges.
However, a broad adoption of Grid Computing cannot be observed yet, due to
various reasons:
• Grid technology is complex and there is still no sufficient understanding of how
to best apply it. Also, there is a lack of best practices for its commercial applica-
tion.
• The requirements for Grid Computing in companies are different compared to
eScience and already developed concepts and technologies cannot be directly
transferred to industry. Companies have higher security and reliability require-
ments. In addition, companies have many processes and applications different
from HPC that cannot easily be adjusted to a Grid infrastructure.
1.5 The Goal and Structure of This Topic
Against the background of the developments described above, the present topic
aims at providing industry practitioners with a thorough understanding of how
businesses can benefit from Grid Computing, and how such solutions are related
to what is commonly referred to as Cloud Computing. The target audience of this
topic is industry practitioners interested in Grid and Cloud as well as potential
buyers of Grid solutions. This may be IT decision makers in Small and Medium-
sized Enterprises (SMEs) as well as in large enterprises, e.g. Chief Technology
Officers (CTOs), IT department heads, or - in the case of rather smaller compa-
nies - actual management staff. In addition, this topic well serves as a base for
further research on Grid/Cloud and its commercial application. Thus, academic
researchers and higher education are considered as secondary target audience. The
contents of this topic have purposely been selected and compiled with a business
focus in mind. Technical details are only provided where necessary. This topic is
divided into four main parts:
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Grid and Cloud Basics - Definition, Classification, Business Models
• Part III: Grid Business Experiments
• Part IV: Guidelines for Practice
Part I sets the context and motivates this topic. The main business and technical
drivers for Grid and Cloud Computing are described together with the project
BEinGRID (chapter 2) where most of the results presented in this topic were created.
Part II starts with a definition of terms, a description of phenomena relevant
for Grid and Cloud Computing and an explanation of the relationships among
them (chapters 3 and 4). In chapters 5 and 6, Grid business models and Grid value
chains are described respectively. An understanding of Grid value chains and busi-
ness models is needed not only to understand the Grid industry but also in order
to understand what a Grid solution is. A Grid solution typically involves different
actors on the supplier side. Grid value networks describe the relationships between
