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Grid and Cloud Computing : A Business Perspective on Technology and Applications

2010 , Stanoevska-Slabeva, Katarina , Wozniak, Thomas , Ristol, Santi

In today's dynamic business environment, IT departments are under permanent pressure to meet two divergent requirements: to reduce costs and to support business agility with higher flexibility and responsiveness of the IT infrastructure. Grid and Cloud Computing enable a new approach towards IT. They enable increased scalability and more efficient use of IT based on virtualization of heterogeneous and distributed IT resources. This book provides a thorough understanding of the fundamentals of Grids and Clouds and of how companies can benefit from them. A wide array of topics is covered, e.g. business models and legal aspects. The applicability of Grids and Clouds in companies is illustrated with four cases of real business experiments. The experiments illustrate the technical solutions and the organizational and IT governance challenges that arise with the introduction of Grids and Clouds. Practical guidelines on how to successfully introduce Grids and Clouds in companies are provided.

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Introduction: Business and Technological Drivers of Grid Computing

2010 , Stanoevska-Slabeva, Katarina , Wozniak, Thomas , Stanoevska-Slabeva, Katarina , Wozniak, Thomas

The vision of using and sharing computers and data as utility has been inspired by constantly increasing computing needs faced by researchers in science and can be traced back in the 1960s to the Internet pioneer Licklider (see Berman and Hey 2004). Licklider wrote in his groundbreaking paper (Licklider 1960)1 that computers should be developed “to enable men and computers to cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence on predetermined programs.” But, it was only in the mid 1990s when this vision became reality and the term “Grid Computing” was coined in order to denote a new computing paradigm (Foster et al. 2001). Explained from the user perspective in the most simplest way, Grid Computing means that computing power and resources can be obtained as utility similar to electricity – the user can simply request information and computations and have them delivered to him without necessity to care where the data he requires resides or which computer is processing his request (Goyal and Lawande 2005). From the technical perspective Grid Computing means the virtualization and sharing of available computing and data resources among different organizational and physical domains. By means of virtualization and support for sharing of resources, scattered computing resources are abstracted from the physical location and their specific features and provided to the users as a single resource that is automatically allocated to their computing needs and processes. At the core of Grid Computing therefore are virtualization and virtual centralization as well as availability of heterogeneous and distributed resources based on collaboration among and sharing of existing infrastructures from different organizational domains which together build the computing Grid.

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Practical Guidelines for Evolving IT Infrastructure towards Grids and Clouds

2009 , Stanoevska-Slabeva, Katarina , Wozniak, Thomas , Hoyer, Volker , Stanoevska-Slabeva, Katarina , Wozniak, Thomas

In the previous chapters of this book the foundation of Grid and Cloud Computing were described and their application in companies was illustrated with examples. Grid Computing enables sharing of and access to distributed and heterogeneous computing resources as well as establishment of VOs. Through virtualization, heterogeneous pools of servers, storage systems and networks are pooled together into a virtualized system that is exposed to the user as a single computing entity. This entity can be centrally monitored and assigned to computing tasks. Overall, Grid Computing enables a virtualization layer that is placed between the heterogeneous infrastructure and the specific user application using it. Grid Computing potentially results in higher flexibility of computing resources and their more efficient utilization, and by that, enables an environmentally friendlier IT management in companies. Cloud Computing evolved from and builds upon the convergence of Grid Computing and SOC. It has the potential to substantially change the way how computing resources are consumed. Core features of Cloud Computing are integrated support for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS as well as user-friendly and service-oriented interfaces for developers and users. Cloud Computing offers a new, easy-to-use way for increasing scalability and flexibility of own IT resources on demand. Sudden peaks can be accommodated with access to external resources provided in a payper- use manner without additional investments in hardware, data centres and related human resources required for maintenance and support. Cloud Computing provides also new opportunities for Independent Software Vendors. They can develop innovative business models and offer their software in a SaaS manner without building up the necessary infrastructure.

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Grid Value Chains - What is a Grid Solution?

2010 , Cuesta, Juan Carlos , Luokkanen-Rabetino, Karita , Stanoevska-Slabeva, Katarina , Stanoevska-Slabeva, Katarina , Wozniak, Thomas

As explained in chapter 3 and 5 before, a Grid solution can be provided in several ways: as a Grid-enabled application, as Utility computing or as Software as a Service. Grid-enabled applications in internal IT deployments are specific software applications that utilize in-house Grid infrastructure. Utility computing is referred to as the provision of Grid computing as service on external resources. In a Software as a Service (SaaS) based solution applications run on external servers and are used in a one-to-many model with a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) funding model or a subscription funding model that is based on pre-defined amounts of usage. Thus, Grid solutions vary from simpler Software as a Product (SaaP) cases to more complex SaaS solutions. While the simplest cases might be handled by one or two providers, the more complex cases consist of many kinds of services, resources and capabilities, and the provision of such services almost always require co-operation between several market actors. In other words, a Grid solution is a sum of many interacting market actors that own distinct resources and capabilities needed to create value for the end user. Moreover, the provision of Grid-based services is different from traditional service provisioning, and it is more complex in terms of contractual agreements, licensing models, definition of SLAs, accounting and billing aspects.

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Cloud Basics - An Introduction to Cloud Computing

2009 , Stanoevska-Slabeva, Katarina , Wozniak, Thomas , Stanoevska-Slabeva, Katarina , Wozniak, Thomas

Cloud Computing has attracted a lot of attention in recent times. The media as well as analysts are generally very positive about the opportunities Cloud Computing is offering. In May 2008, Merrill Lynch (2008) estimated the cost advantages of Cloud Computing to be three to five times for business applications and more than five times for consumer applications. According to a Gartner press release from June 2008, Cloud Computing will be “no less influential than e-business” (Gartner 2008a). The positive attitude towards the importance and influence of Cloud Computing resulted in optimistic Cloud-related market forecasts. In October 2008, IDC (2008b) forecasted an almost threefold growth of spending on Cloud services until 2012, reaching $42 billion. Same analyst firm reported that the cost advantage associated with the Cloud model becomes even more attractive in the economic downturn (IDC 2008b). Positive market prospects are also driven by the expectation that Cloud Computing might become the fundamental approach towards Green IT.

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Grid Basics

2010 , Stanoevska-Slabeva, Katarina , Wozniak, Thomas , Stanoevska-Slabeva, Katarina , Wozniak, Thomas

The term Grid or Grid Computing implies different technologies, markets and solutions to different people. The meanings associated with the terms range from cluster computing, High Performance Computing (HPC), utility computing, peer-to-peer computing to specific new types of infrastructure. In order to clarify the position, the aim of this chapter is to define and explain Grid Computing. Thereby, the following aspects will be considered Definition of Grid Computing Explanation of Grid Computing Architectures Overview of basic functionalities and components of Grid Computing Overview of advantages and risks associated with Grid Computing Classification of Grids Overview of trends related to Grid Computing such as Service-oriented Computing (SOC), Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and Cloud Computing.

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Organizational and Governance Challenges for Grid Computing in Companies - Summary of Findings from Business Experiments

2009 , Stanoevska-Slabeva, Katarina , Wozniak, Thomas , Stanoevska-Slabeva, Katarina , Wozniak, Thomas

Grid computing originated in eScience where it is applied to support scientific tasks requiring high performance computing and collaborative scientific efforts. The Business Experiments presented in chapters 9 to 12 and the remaining 21 experimentsof the BEinGRID project (BEinGRID Booklet 2009) demonstrated the applicability of Grid computing in business environments and provided an outlook towards the application of Cloud computing in companies. Besides illustrating and testing technical Grid innovations and developments specifically dedicated to business usage of Grids, services and an outlook to Cloud computing, the Business Experiments provided an insight of the potential benefits and challenges of these technologies for business purposes. One benefit of Grid computing for companies is enabling high performance computing (HPC) either through access to external HPC resources or through creating internal Grids based on existing company computing resources. The access to HPC enables significant acceleration of business tasks that require high computing power. Such tasks are mainly simulation tasks as part of product development, design and engineering activities or other tasks as treatment or risk calculation in health and financial organizations respectively.