Users eye computer grids as potential servers for mainstream apps

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February 14, 2005 (Computerworld) -- BOSTON
Computer grids are emerging as potential application servers for mainstream business uses, which could broaden their deployment in corporate enterprises, said IT managers and vendors who attended the GlobusWorld conference here last week.
Most companies that have deployed grid technology are using it for compute-intensive processes. That's currently the case at Wachovia Corp., for instance. But Robert Ortega, Wachovia's vice president of architecting and engineering, said he believes grid computing may be ready for broader use. "We have started thinking of the grid as a virtual application server," said Ortega, who outlined his work with the technology during a presentation at the conference.
Wachovia has about 700 workstations in a grid, and Ortega expects that number will increase into the thousands over time. The Charlotte, N.C.-based financial services firm is using the combined CPU power of the systems for financial calculations in lieu of investing in more-expensive dedicated servers, he said.
Wachovia is testing a new version of New York-based DataSynapse Inc.'s GridServer software, which would allow Ortega to move application servers based on technology such as J2EE or .Net to the grid. "We're looking at this thing as a platform for running the services that make up an SOA," he said, referring to a service-oriented architecture.
In an SOA, for instance, an order management system could require reference data and security information from other applications. Ortega said the upgraded DataSynapse application, which was announced last week, can proactively cache information and make it available across a grid.
IBM has also developed a product, called WebSphere-XD, that enables application resource sharing in a grid. The tool was released in November, and about six users are testing it, said Gennaro Cuomo, director of IBM's WebSphere Technology Institute.
Dan Kaberon, director of computer resource management at employee benefits management outsourcer Hewitt Associates LLC in Lincolnshire, Ill., said he sees the appeal of moving more applications to a grid but added that security remains an issue.
Balancing Security
"We're trying to balance the big-time advantages of shared resources against the security needs - that's the big trade-off," Kaberon said. For now, that means keeping some services physically separate, he noted. Hewitt is using grid technology to move some mainframe processes to commodity servers.
Grid adoption also faces other obstacles. Users at GlobusWorld, which was focused on the Globus Alliance's open-source grid tool kit, said many applications aren't written for grids that tap into hundreds or thousands of CPUs. In addition, software pricing is often based on per-CPU charges, which could make licensing unworkable for grids.
One thing that's critical is the use of grid standards, said Jim Cox, a delivery systems analyst and architect in The Boeing Co.'s IT shared services group. Boeing insists that vendors adhere to standards developed by the Global Grid Forum. "Without that, we've got chaos," Cox said. "We cannot afford this proprietary lockbox that we got ourselves in 12 to 15 years ago."

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