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HP goes big on grids

By Alun Williams

Posted on 4 Sep 2003 at 16:02

HP has announced plans to further embrace grid computing.

HP says that it is committed to using open grid standards, such as Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) across its range of enterprise products. And in the 'next few years', according to HP, it will grid-enable a wide range of products, from handheld devices to computers.

The idea of grid computing is to enable companies or organisations to dynamically draw on computing resources when needed - proving a more flexible and efficient use of overall computer resources.

'HP started developing grid-like infrastructures more than five years ago,' claims Shane Robinson, chief strategy and technology officer at HP. 'Grid is an important piece of the HP Adaptive Enterprise strategy,' he added. '[It] has the potential to solve real business problems by simplifying global access to enterprise computing services.'

According to analysts cited by HP, the grid software and services market will be worth $4bn by 2008 as corporate IT departments embrace the technologies.

'For CIOs, the grid can help better synchronize business and technology demands in real time. To help realise that potential, HP has committed to grid-enable our IT systems. Over the next few years, this means products ranging from HP's smallest handhelds, printers and PCs to our most powerful storage arrays and supercomputers, will be able to connect with and serve as resources on the grid.'

More specifically, Grid-enabled offerings from HP will include a Grid Resource Topology Designer (a GUI for 'drawing' resource needs), a Web Services Management Framework (for managing grid services), the Utility Data Centre (to deliver grid capabilities), SmartFrog (a technology for configuring resources on distributed computers that make up a grid) and Enterprise Grid Consulting from the HP Services division.

IBM has just been trumpeting its use of grids as part of the computing infrastructure behind the US Open tennis championship. Its grid-based On Demand products - a family of offerings codenamed Project Symphony - have been making the most of the computing resources. It seems that when the systems are not processing tennis information they are being used to help crunch numbers as part of cancer research.

IBM claims that 'while most IT infrastructures run at about 15 percent efficiency, the US Open infrastructure will run at close to 80 percent utilization, largely because of Project Symphony'. It says its on-demand system at the US Open can scale up its capacity more than 50 times to handle unforeseen activity spikes.

You can read IBM's US Open story here.