Grid Computing and Enterprise Architecture: A Match for the Future

by David Loshin

Promise or red herring? There is a lot of buzz surrounding the term "grid computing," but what does grid computing really mean? The concept originally was meant to describe an underlying infrastructure for on-demand sharing of distributed computing resources, and the term was coined to convey the image of the electric power grid through which generated electricity is created, shared, and distributed across North America. An innocent understanding of grid computing would imply "the application of many resources within a network to solve a single problem at the same time," and one might assume that the problems suited to grid computing are scientific problems requiring large amounts of processing cycles. But the excitement surrounding grid computing belies a more fundamental value proposition. So what is grid computing really all about? To boil it down to its lowest common denominator, grid computing is about sharing and collaboration.