barge, your thoughts on the HP news:
especially at the bottom
HP Systems to be Grid-enabled; Grid Services to Simplify
Use, Management of Infrastructure Resources
HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced plans to further enable its enterprise infrastructure technologies for grid computing. By leveraging open grid standards, HP plans to help customers simplify the use and management of distributed IT (information technology) resources. The initiative will integrate industry grid standards, including the Globus Toolkit and Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA), across HP's enterprise product lines.
HP also announced enterprise consulting within HP Services for grid-based platforms. HP Services will provide management, deployment and lifecycle support of grid architectures. HP's product and service plans extend the company's Adaptive Enterprise strategy to perfectly synchronize business and IT. Grid computing will enable enterprises to draw on IT resources anywhere in the world to meet their dynamic needs for computing resources.
Analysts have estimated grid software and services will become a $4 billion market by 2008, but HP expects the opportunity to be significantly larger as corporate IT departments embrace the grid.
"HP started developing grid-like infrastructures more than five years ago. Grid is an important piece of the HP Adaptive Enterprise strategy, where today, we see the shared computing vision soon turning into reality as commercial enterprises more aggressively seek the agility and cost benefits the grid affords," said Shane Robison, chief strategy and technology officer, HP. "The grid has the potential to solve real business problems by simplifying global access to enterprise computing services.
"For CIOs, the grid can help better synchronize business and technology demands in real time. To help realize 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."
HP and the Grid
The "grid" concept was formally developed in the mid-1990s as a shared computing approach that coordinates decentralized resources and uses open, general-purpose protocols and interfaces to deliver high-quality service levels. The grid is designed to render almost anything in IT -- computers, processing power, data, Web services, storage space, software applications, data files or devices -- as a "grid service."
Today, HP delivers grid-enabled services, solutions and products to help enterprises better manage and capitalize on change. Taking advantage of and promoting heterogeneous environments and interoperability across devices, the offerings include:
-- Enterprise Grid Consulting from HP Services: This new
offering will allow customers to benefit from the
expertise of HP Services when applying the concepts
of grid computing to commercial environments.
-- Grid Software Infrastructure: Building on the OpenView
platform, HP is extending the capabilities of the software
up through the management of Web services to deliver
comprehensive real-time business process intelligence and
enable immediate IT resource response in the context of
Web services or grid services.
-- HP Utility Data Center (UDC): The HP UDC delivers many
grid capabilities to commercial customers today and is
compatible with OGSA standards.
-- Grid Resource Topology Designer: An innovation from HP
Labs, this graphical user interface allows users to simply
and easily "draw" resource needs, then submit the
requirements to the grid for fulfillment. The Grid
Resource Topology Designer, working with the HP UDC,
automatically decides on the appropriate resources to
deploy to fulfill the service-level request.
-- Web Services Management Framework (WSMF): HP and its
partners are formalizing this framework -- a logical
architecture for the management of resources, including
grid and Web services. WSMF was recently submitted to the
OASIS Web services Distributed Management Technical
Committee as input into creating a standard management
interface for all IT resources and services.
-- SmartFrog: A technology developed by HP Labs, Smart
Framework for Object Groups (SmartFrog) enables
administrators to easily configure resources on the
distributed computers that make up the grid.
HP Customers and Partners
HP also is working closely with key customers, researchers and standards organizations to help the grid evolve from a technology concept into something that offers real commercial value. This includes efforts to ensure the grid:
-- is built on open standards;
-- reduces complexity by enabling the management of grid
services with easy-to-use standards and software;
-- enables heterogeneous systems to communicate and
collaborate better together;
-- establishes trust by guaranteeing the security of
participating systems and authentication of portable
applications; and
-- is truly robust, reliable and scalable.
