The term grid computing evolved from the early desire by academics to connect computers to "supercomputers" and supercomputers in turn, to "metacomputers" that could be controlled remotely. The sum total processing power could then be used as required for large projects. The word "grid" was borrowed from the electricity "grid" with distributed computing mimicking the electric grid`s ability to channel resources to wherever they were required, and be accessible through a compatible device at any point on the grid.
According to ICT analysts, the Arpanet, precursor to the Internet, was originally intended to be a distributed computing network that would pool CPU-intensive tasks. However, the Web ended up giving birth to elements such as e-mail and FTP instead.
From a global perspective, SA and Africa are behind the rest of the world in the development and use of grid computing.
We definitely need to develop and grow our infrastructure to jump on the grid computing train. Bandwidth availability and security are some of the biggest obstacles, but looking at a satellite picture of the communication and fibre optic cables between the US and Europe illustrates the sheer volume of bandwidth and data traffic passing between these continents.
There are in excess of 180 scientific and academic institutions involved in grid computing in Europe and the States. In addition, strong moves to provide grid computing software for business clients are being seen from both open source developers and multinationals that provide packaged solutions, like IBM.
Yet, South African banks, in particular, are already looking to invest in this "processing speed- and capacity-enhancing technology", especially for the batch processing of transactions - a traditionally processing-hungry exercise. Down the road I see banks investing in this technology to enable reduced costs, faster time to market and a boosted service offering to customers.
Global computing power
It is the cost of grid computing software that needs to be addressed and open source developers are driving the predominant research in this area.
Andy Brauer, chief technology executive, Business Connexion`s Networks competency
Where the Internet has given us the ability to communicate and research globally, grid computing could give us the ability to harness global computing power for large projects that could otherwise not have access to the CPU capacity they need.
One current example of grid computing on a global scale is the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project that uses unused CPU power in hundreds of thousands of users` computers to look for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence via NASA`s SETI project Web site.
Businesses and government could use grid computing locally to pool computing power. For example, in the area of police forensics and detection, multiple computers would make the process of analysing DNA strands very swift and assist in solving crimes.
In addition, if police worldwide pooled their processing resources as well as their archives, criminals could be apprehended quickly, regardless of how many national boundaries they crossed to evade pursuit.
Other government organisations like the South African Revenue Service could also benefit from tapping into the grid, perhaps giving tax evaders sleepless nights in the process.
The enhanced processing speed and large capacity available through grid computing requires plentiful and affordable bandwidth and this is a local stumbling block. Coining a new term, this obstacle could be an opportunity for telecommunication providers to become grid service providers, giving customers access to grid resources much like a utility company that gives its customers access to water or electricity.
For businesses, a shared campus environment rather than a WAN would be the best architecture for sharing computing resources and could result in significant cost savings, especially for large processing projects.
The Infiniband architecture would lend itself well to grid computing and it is a global standard. It would be important to ensure the grid computing bus speed would be related and kept constant with the speed of the campus network otherwise there would be bottlenecks in the computing grid, so again we see sufficient bandwidth is vital here for grid computing to work properly.
The cost issue
Of course, for businesses there must be clear cost benefit for grid computing, but many companies already operate a client/server network which lends itself well to grid computing as the hardware and skills are often already there.
It is the cost of grid computing software that needs to be addressed and open source developers are driving the predominant research in this area.
Internationally, large software companies like IBM are developing grid computing software packages, but these will probably be costly compared to open source equivalents.
The benefits of grid computing are faster and ultimately more economical use of processing resources to `crunch the numbers` and process the data. This is invaluable for scientific endeavours, government bodies and transaction-heavy or batch jobs for businesses. But what about the downside?
Security concerns
Because of the exposure of grid computing, security is an issue.
This enhanced computing power could be used by hackers to break encryptions down faster. Yet the field of quantum encryption is developing, which could be an answer to this as it changes a network`s encryption so rapidly even grid computing would have trouble tracking it.
In addition to this, Internet version 2 is being developed in the US and Europe and here security is being built into the Internet from the ground up, rather than being tacked on as an afterthought as was the case with our current Internet.
SA should get onto Internet 2 as it is the best new highway for grid computing. It combines the benefits of speed through new fibre optic cable, it is also less cluttered, suffers from less latency and is more secure.
It appears that Internet 2 will definitely be the global grid computing and communication Web of the future. The question is how soon will SA enter the grid?
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