OIL & GAS

Businesses that fail to exploit the potential benefits of grid computing risk missing out on new market opportunities, warns a grid taskforce group. The Information Age Partnership Grid Taskforce’s ‘Unlocking the Grid’ newly published report identifies the potential for exploitation of Grid technologies within the UK. John Higgins, Grid Taskforce Chairman, and Director General of UK hi-tech trade association Intellect, said, "The Taskforce strongly recommends that the UK Government acts quickly to apply and exploit the Grid across a wide range of industry sectors. If it does not then the UK will be unable to benefit from its unique expertise as a global service provider, and will miss the opportunity to lead in the bourgeoning new services market, as well as to benefit from new delivery mechanisms for existing services - ultimately failing to meet its competitiveness agenda." The Taskforce recommends the government create pilot 'Grid Services Consortia' (GSC). These will provide core UK expertise in Grid exploitation, by bringing together information technology and telecommunications service providers, major stakeholder leaders, middleware providers, specialist SMEs and application tools providers, with a clear focus on developing novel application services in their selected sector, Higgins said: "The Taskforce recommendations will change the way UK companies work for the better, by providing access to resources more efficiently, by combining resources/services in a way not previously possible, and by allowing the exploitation of the dynamic creation of high value trading relationships." The full 'Unlocking the Grid' report is available at http://www.intellectuk.org/grid