The future is grid computing and Web services as one

By Aneet Shah 10 Feb 2004 | IT-Director.com, special to SearchWebServices.com

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Market Analysis

The future is grid computing and Web services as one
While at the Finexpo City Technology Strategies conference last week, there was a session from JP Morgan and UBS around how they are using grid computing and Web services together. They are reporting positive returns from early small-scale implementations of Web services and Grid computing, raising expectations for wider uptake in new application areas across the enterprise.

A lot of the major institutions have developed grid farms using blade servers and the like, and a lot have implemented Web service solutions as part of their service orientated architecture strategy. So I suppose the next logical step is to harness the power and capability of grid computing as part of the service orientated architecture.

For example at UBS they are aiming to put a Web services infrastructure on top of Grid solutions in an effort to create an 'adaptive environment' where resources can be quickly and easily added and application failures automatically re-routed. The challenge that they face is that they need to gain economies of scale from this by making this solution applicable enterprise wide.

This theory was mooted as early as 2002 when Paul Messina of Caltech, chairman of the Grid Forum Advisory Committee, said in opening remarks to Global Grid Forum 4 that Grid computing and Web services may eventually converge until there is no distinction between the two. This won't be about choice between Web services or grid middleware but rather a symbiotic relationship. The appearance of new Web service standards is pushing grid computing beyond its traditional remit of heavy-duty analytics to deal with new demands for application and technology infrastructure management in heterogeneous computer environments. It could be also utilised as a diary, scheduler, and workflow tool.

In theory all this is good news for the financial services market by the innovative use of new technologies available and translates into some tangible benefits for the businesses. For example, reduction in time in developing client data interfaces and mapping, alternative and better use of resources towards more value added services, better client service etc.

However there are still many challenges that need to be overcome to make this an industry-wide strategy. Some challenges that will need to be considered over the next few years are: improving and developing interoperability standards across the distributed resource management space while there are operational grids are being implemented and the general computing environment is evolving rapidly; complete migration to a Web service-orientated architecture is still a while away; and finding applications that can efficiently utilize both of them.

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