Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
characteristic of a VO is a common goal among the VO members. If this is not in
place, the sharing of resources may rather take place ad hoc and does not result
in longer-term relationships between the involved companies. From the available
survey data, the existence of a common goal among potential VO members in the
study sample cannot be judged.
Messerschmidt (2009) also analysed the main reasons why companies imple-
ment Grid technology. Most companies use Grid to improve existing processes. In
particular, the main reasons for using Grid technology are:
• Speeding up of processes (33% financial services, 34% remaining industries)
• Higher flexibility of IT resources (30% financial services, 26% remaining indus-
tries),
• Increasing efficiency of existing processes (30% financial services, 27%
remaining industries),
• More efficient utilization of IT resources (30% financial services, 28% remaining
industries), and
• Cost reduction (27% financial services, 33% remaining industries).
The use of Grid technology is rather less driven by a potential enhancement of
existing customer offerings or creation of new customer offerings (21% financial
services, 24% remaining industries). This also means that there is still low aware-
ness of the strategic potential of Grid technology for establishment of new processes
as well as increased agility and competitiveness.
Sustainability and Green IT are no primary usage reasons yet. Only 15% of
financial services and 21% of remaining industries consider Green IT as an impor-
tant reason for Grid usage. However, Green IT and sustainability can be expected
to gain importance in the coming years as the need for computing and storage is
constantly increasing and data centres increasingly contribute to total volume of
greenhouse emissions (see also section 1.3 in chapter 1).
Since not any IT task or process may be able to benefit from Grid technology to
the same extent, the type and technical profile of IT tasks performed in a company
determines the readiness for and overall benefits a company can obtain from using
Grid technology. In general, tasks and processes that can be decomposed into sub-
processes that can then be run in parallel are suited to be performed in a Grid envi-
ronment. Decomposable tasks can benefit from both increased computational power
of an IT resource and from a greater number of IT resources allocated to perform the
task (Messerschmidt 2009). Table 14.1 shows the results of the survey related to the
profile of tasks performed in companies regarding their decomposability.
