Market Analysis
IBM grid computing -- revisited
In 2002, Bloor Research North America produced a report on grid computing that found that "compute" and "collaborative" grids are moving quickly into the commercial marketplace. On January 27th, 2003, IBM reaffirmed that viewpoint with the announcement of a series of industry/solution-focused grid products and services aimed at:
- Five grid focus areas (in the areas of research and development grids; engineering and design grids; business analytics grids; enterprise optimization grids; and government development grids);
- Five industries (with a focus on certain commercial markets such as life sciences; aerospace, automotive; and financial; as well as in the government marketplace);
- Ten industry-aligned offerings (including workshops, tools, customer design centers, and more);
- Related education and service offerings; and,
- A restatement of the role of several of its grid middleware partners (Platform Computing; DataSynapse; Avaki; United Devices; and Entropia).
A Complete Change in Marketing Approach
What's really intriguing about IBM's latest series of grid announcements is that instead of focusing on the technical intricacies of grid middleware, grid networking, grid standards, and grid management (as it had done in the past), IBM's tone and approach to grid marketing
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has changed. Instead of describing IBM's role in the creation of a grid toolkit; or it's participation in the formation of grid standards (like OGSA); or it's strategic grid Independent Software Vendor (ISV) relationships; this time IBM has focused on how grids can be used to:
Decision Trees Analysis
Furthermore, the company can now show prospective commercial grid buyers specifically how they can achieve desired business results such as improved efficiency or increased productivity. To this end, IBM now provides grid workshops; discussion forums; customer design centers; classroom training; and design/deployment services; technologies; and partner relationships designed to help its customers and prospects learn about grids and deploy grid solutions in focused commercial and government markets.
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In other words, IBM is changing its grid dialog and is now describing grid computing in the context of particular industry's business problems/solutions. This is a major departure from the technology/standards-focused grid discussions of the past.
What's just as interesting is that IBM has put together decision trees - by industry - that describe (for instance) how a financial institution can use grids to accelerate portfolio analysis (see Figure 1); or that describes how an aerospace firm can use grids to share large, detailed, graphically complex models in order to improve productivity through collaborative design; and so on.
What is going on is that IBM has learned from its customers and from commercial grid deployments over the past year, and now knows how to describe grid computing in terms of business/profit-focused, problem/solution/benefit statements.
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