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IBM spreads grid computing to WebSphere

Posted on 22 Jul 2003 at 17:02

The latest version of WebSphere Application Server is to include grid computing facilities, IBM has announced.

WebSphere Application Server V5.0.2 (Enterprise) will be available 25 July and carry what IBM describes by analogy as a 'traffic cop' feature. The software will, IBM claims, intelligently monitor application workloads and will route traffic to different servers as is appropriate. The idea is to enable a cluster of multiple servers to operate as a single environment, one that automatically reacts to sudden changes in demand.

The concept behind grid computing is to pool available computing resources and make them transparently available, as if from a virtual single system, as and when they are need by particular computers on a network.

IBM is banking on this technique to both improve network performance and get more value from existing server resources. It believes that under typical, non-grid circumstances mainframes might lie idle as much as 40 per cent of the time, with Unix servers 'serving' less than 10 per cent of the time, and many business PCs being under-used for as much as 95 per cent of a day.

IBM states that future versions of WebSphere will extend the 'traffic cop' capability to run across different clusters. It will automatically coordinate multiple clusters of servers across an organisation, which will be running various business applications.

IBM has been pushing this particular area of futuristic computing. Back in April it outlined, with promises of software to follow, a blueprint for building autonomic systems - environments that can better manage themselves, automatically - which is related to the management of grid computing. The blueprint followed other recent related announcements, including grid computing for Linux-based enterprise systems - IBM announces Grid Computing for Linux. Specifically, Grid Computing being available for enterprises running Linux on the IBM eServer zSeries mainframe.