GRID – Commercial
Realities
Steve Wallage, Research Director, The 451 Group
PRISM Forum
Edinburgh
27 April 2005
Slide 1
The 451 Grroup
• Analyst group covering the emerging IT market sector
• 30 analysts in New York, San Francisco and London
• Been covering grids extensively since 2002 in daily market
analysis
• 2003 200 page report on grid market opportunities
• New service covering adoption of grid technologies by specific
verticals
PRISM Forum
Edinburgh
27 April 2005
Slide 2
Early customer adoption
Where adoption is occurring …
PRISM Forum
Edinburgh
27 April 2005
Slide 3
Telcos – grid plans
BT - VPG virtual private grids through
application-specific configurations (DR etc);
turnkey and hosted systems supplying
bandwidth, CPU capacity and delivery of
applications; additional AAI offerings
Deutsche Telekom - Grid expected to underpin
all of its services over time. Plans to deliver
services to external business customers using
grid by 2007
PRISM Forum
Edinburgh
27 April 2005
Slide 4
Telco grid plans - 2
Telecom Italia - possible grid plans includes providing new services
to Internet customers with a thin client and software for rent;
reducing cost for customers who 'donate' cycles, and improve
collaborative working
Telefonica – analyzing call detail records
Telco usage of grids can be segmented into five areas; internal
usage, providing the network facilities for grid deployments,
developing next generation infrastructure, reselling grid services
and becoming a Virtual Private Grid
All telcos have key sponsors and executive support, plus special
groups such as BT’s Grid action Team.
PRISM Forum
Edinburgh
27 April 2005
Slide 5
The leaders - banks
• The 451 Group estimates that at least 90% of the major
investment banks are already using grid computing within their
organization.
•Most of these applications have been driven by individual lines of
business, and to meet specific needs such as complex Monte Carlo
simulations.
•Evolving grid computing from individual LoBs remains a highly
challenging task. LoBs typically haven’t trusted other groups’
applications enough to want to share compute facilities (except
mainframes). Sharing resources will require non-trivial policy and
prioritization management, the implementation of chargeback and
accounting, and implies IT control issues.
• Most deployments within the firewall and often dedicated kit
PRISM Forum
Edinburgh
27 April 2005
Slide 6
Key drivers
Lower cost – this has been important in getting early
grid projects established – swapping out Unix SMP
systems for commodity blades – though cost alone is
not the only driver.
• Solving complex problems faster
• Integrating grids across business lines to improve
communication and execution.
• Regulation and compliance
• Establishing a SoA is a strategic goal and that grid is
one way – though not the only way - to underpin this.
•
PRISM Forum
Edinburgh
27 April 2005
Slide 7
The six stage deployment
Level
Description
Typical
timescales
2001-03
1
Trialling
2
Single
application
2002-05
3
Single
application in
multiple
departments
2003-06
4
Multiple
applications
within single
department
2004-08
5
Multiple
applications
within
multiple
departments
2005-09
6
Utility model
2008-11
PRISM Forum
Edinburgh
Drivers
Department
Awarene ss of grid
computing
Keepin g up with
competitors
Interest in possible
benefits
Compliance
Improve utilization
Ab ility to run new
and more complex
simulations
Reducing costs
Desire to trial grid in
other areas
Compliance
Reducing costs
Central IT
R&D/eme rging
technology
research
Application
LoB
Application
LoB
Compliance
Leverage s uccess of
single applications
running on grid
across organization
Desire to run further
complex simulations
Widening the impact
of grids
Interim step to SoA
Looking at other
types of application
ra ther than just
heavy analytics
Virtualization
becoming key
Chargeb ack
Genera l purpose
computin g/enterprise
apps
Utility model
The benefits of the
SoA
Multiple
application
LoB with some
central IT
involvement
Application
LoB with more
central IT
involvement
Central IT
Central IT
27 April 2005
Slide 8
Bank drivers and obstacles
ABN Amro
Merrill Lynch
TD Bank
UBS
Wachovia
Increased processing
requirement as microfish
processes are digitized. Utility
and SoA are goals.
Reduce costs
New services
Increase utlization
Large scale backup, support for
heterogeneous storage devices,
politics.
To meet regulators’
requirements and deliver tools
to traders to handle new exotic
products.
Reduce cost
The architecture allows a
problem to be broken out into
small chunks of computation
that can be run across a set of
heterogeneous devices.
Meeting service level
thresholds
New services
Utilization
Organizational issues
Some technology integration
issues
Creating a single metadata layer
and siloed tiers of virtualization
Trust issues
Unproven technology
Biggest challenge is to make
grid useful on an enterprise scale
without being intrusive at the
application (development or
production) level.
Technology - speed, security,
data state, provisioning and
orchestration and standards and
accounting practises
Cultural - newness of approach,
control, accountability and who
pays
PRISM Forum
Edinburgh
27 April 2005
Slide 9
Key obstacles - soft
• Cultural
• Grids require new ways of working
• Implementation of chargeback and accounting
• Awareness
• Lack of compelling casestudies outside one or two verticals and
the world of academia
• Some stories of dissatisfied early adopters
PRISM Forum
Edinburgh
27 April 2005
Slide 10
Key obstacles - hard
• Data management
• Software licensing (but not #1)
• Grids will need to demonstrate they can support general purpose
and middle/front office types of compute requirements
• Policy and prioritization management
• Security
• Data integration and synchronization
• Microsoft apps
PRISM Forum
Edinburgh
27 April 2005
Slide 11
Evolving software licensing
• Evolution not revolution – varies widely by industry but will be
determined by the likes of IBM and Oracle
• ISVs say it is customer demand that makes them change – reality
is usually competition
• Many ways that users are trying to overcome challenge from open
source/in-house to scripts to gain access to licenses on grid to
better license management (typically FlexLM) to trying to create a
win/win with ISV to sheer market power and litigation
• Key challenge for the user community over what is actually
required – usage based flexibility clearly desirable but wide
spectrum of views over type/nature of any premium, limiting costs,
tie-in to business needs, challenges of departmental buying and
other costs such as maintenance
PRISM Forum
Edinburgh
27 April 2005
Slide 12
GRID – Commercial
Realities
Steve Wallage, Research Director, The 451 Group
PRISM Forum
Edinburgh
27 April 2005
Slide 13