Grid Business Models - Grid and Cloud Computing - page 74

uses the Sun Grid Compute Utility to handle work from its energy industry customers
that exceeds the capacity of its own IT infrastructure. The Sun Grid gives Virtual
Compute Corporation the ability to quickly and efficiently run compute-intensive
jobs for its customers. Using Sun Grid the company has now the required flex-
ibility to meet variable demands instantly through on-demand compute resources
and this effective and quick response to the requirements of the customers provides
the company with a competitive edge. However this was not the only benefit since
the company saved up to US$3 million and two months time by avoiding build-out
of additional infrastructure to handle customer's projects.
The example of this company is a demonstration of a client of Sun as the fifth
business case category indicates. At the same time the same company is a provider
of a service as the second business case indicates. In this last case the company rents
external computing resources through the Internet with Grid being the underlying
infrastructure on the provider's side here being the Sun company. The company
needs Grid for performance differentiation and uses it to provide services to other
companies following a SaaS business model.

Table 5.9: Example of business cases 5 and 2: Sun

Most popular Grid Business
Cases in the market

The Grid benefit (value-
proposition or added-value)

Main actors involved

5. Company acts as a computing
resources provider: Sun

For the user: Resources
provided on demand.
Performance differentiation,
cost efficiency, service differ-
entiation
For the company: revenue
generation and reduced costs
by offering such a service
through virtualisation

The resource
provider: Sun
The users that buy
resources on demand:
Virtual Compute
Corporation

2. Company rents external
computing resources through
the internet with Grid being the
underlying infrastructure in the
provider's side: Virtual Compute
Corporation

For the company:
Performance differentiation,
cost efficiency, service differ-
entiation

The company:
Virtual Compute
Corporation

5.7 Conclusion

In this chapter we have presented an overview of the main Grid Business Models,
namely those that can be adopted from the Grid application and service providers in
the market. In order to achieve a deep understanding of these models the process of
their creation needs to be defined. The first step in this process is the understanding
of the new technology but the most significant one is the correct definition of the
added value (the proposition) that this technology can offer to potential customers
and/or users. Furthermore, a set of business enablers, or Grid benefits are presented;