INDUSTRY

A new IDC study shows that the grid computing market is on the verge of major expansion. According to a recent forecast, the aggregate grid computing market is expected to exceed $12 billion in revenue by 2007 across high performance computing (HPC) technical markets and commercial viable enterprises. "We believe that grids hold significant potential as the next step in the evolution of the IT environment, especially as the technology breaks out from the HPC space and becomes more broadly applied in commercial data centers," said John Humphreys, research manager of Workstations and High Performance Computing Systems at IDC. "We expect grid adoption to take root next in the generalized IT infrastructure and to see early adoption begin in areas that are not mission critical." The projected revenue increase can be attributed to a combination of factors including the maturation and standardization of grid software, the drive for efficient use of IT infrastructure by end users, the expanded awareness of grids and the expansion of the market beyond traditional high performance computing (HPC) applications and users. Key Findings: -- The grid market is beginning to split into 3 distinct segments: compute, data, and optimization -- The majority of today's grid implementations are in the compute space with a small set of applications -- Emerging opportunity is primarily focused on the pooling and allocation of resources across a variety of business services While the potential opportunity is both broad and significant, the challenges are also varied with end users most often citing the cultural and organizational concerns associated with resource sharing. "Today, many, if not most HPC users are currently exploring grids in order to improve communications between institutions, manage resources within an institution, and to maximize resource utilization," said Chris Willard, research vice president of Workstations and High Performance Computing Systems at IDC. "To size such an opportunity, we included all computer systems connected to any grid as part of the revenue value." The new study, Role of Grid Computing in the Coming Innovation Wave (IDC #30871), contains data and analysis of IDC's investigations into the emerging grid computing opportunity. To purchase this study, call IDC's Sales at 508-988-7988 or email sales@idc.com.