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Grid Computing Update - Cycle IV
The fourth update to Quocirca's Grid Index shows how initial pilots of Grid computing are now moving towards full implementations.  However, large-scale Grid implementations, covering an enterprise's total IT infrastructure, are still rare.  Organisations are going for discrete cluster Grids in specific areas.
Key Findings

  •  Initial pilots of Grid are now moving to full implementations
    There is a marked growth in Grid implementations reflected by this cycle - significant use of Grid computing as cluster Grids in selected areas has grown from under 10% to nearly 30%, and modest use in selected areas has grown from 10% to 40%.  Enterprise Grid adoption has risen from below 1% to over 5%.
  • The Grid indices continue to grow - but the rate of increase is slowing down.
    The US is static across all Grid index measurements, with growth in Europe and the Asia Pacific regions being less in percentage terms than the previous cycle.  The Asia Pacific region shows the highest levels of growth over the cycle.
  • As in Cycle III, Adoption in the United States is ahead of Europe, and the Asia Pacific region lags behind - but the rate of growth is slowing
    The overall Grid indices for the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific were 6.1, 5.4 and 5.3 respectively.  At the adoption index level, the United States leads Europe and Asia Pacific again, with scores of 4.3, 3.4 and 2.5 respectively.
  • Grid is being implemented as a mainstream technology, but not on a large enterprise scale, and the hurdles from Cycle III are still there.
    The majority of Grid implementations are discrete Grids of clustered servers, rather than enterprise distributed Grids.  The funding and ownership of Grids and the lack of maturity of Grid technologies remain as major hurdles to adoption.  However, security and management of Grids or of Service Oriented Architectures are not seen as insurmountable issues, and those who have implemented such technologies (the "gurus") see little problem in these areas.
  • Overall knowledge of Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) is low
    In both the business and technology respondents, there is a very low level of understanding as to what an SOA is about, and the value that it can bring to an organisation.  Over 60% of business respondents and nearly 25% of IT respondents had no knowledge at all of SOA
  • Direct correlations can be seen between other technologies and Grid
    There is a direct correlation between knowledge of SOA and the overall Grid indices for respondents, as well as for the usage of specific registries such as a UDDI for managing functional components. 
  • Implementations of enterprise Grids and enterprise SOAs are not as strongly correlated at this point.
    Although there is a tight correlation between SOA-enabling discrete parts of an infrastructure and the use of Grid technologies, the combination of broad-scale SOA adoption and Grid are not as close.  Quocirca believes that this is due to organisations being loathe to combine too many new technologies in one large project.
  • There is a chasm in perceptions of IT involvement between IT management and business management
    40% of business respondents believe that IT is involved in decision making at the earliest possible stage, while only 21% of IT respondents agree.  9% of IT respondents felt that they were involved too late to have any meaningful input - whereas less than 3% of business respondents felt that IT were totally left out of the decision making process.  This chasm is also a major blocker to Grid adoption, as the technologists cannot communicate specific Grid-related values into the business.
  • Companies are not being as heavily driven by compliance issues as is generally thought
    Only 42% of respondents agree that their company is being driven by compliance - as against 83% agreeing that strategy drives them, 74% are driven by numbers and 68% by the markets.