Recent advances in microprocessor speeds, optical and wireless communications, and storage capacity and speed have made computers ubiquitous. The old dream of increasing computing power by aggregating many small computing elements has now taken the form of a concept called grid computing. This book seeks to introduce information technology (IT) professionals to the economics and the trends of grid computing, explaining the advantages of the paradigm, and its main future challenges. The book was written with the contribution of the leaders of several different software companies and research organizations. Its purpose is not to explain the programming intrinsics of different grid technologies, but rather to summarize what the grid is, and how it can help to raise productivity in companies and research centers.

The book can be divided into three sections. The first section describes why grid computing can be useful to the corporate IT infrastructure. Chapter 1, “IT Infrastructure Evolution,” describes the evolution of related technologies, showing that the infrastructure to make better use of computing resources is already in place. Chapter 2, “Productivity Paradox and Informating Technology,” discusses the reasons why the productivity growth rate associated with US-based technology has slowed down during the last five decades. The conclusion is that the promise of information technology has yet to be fully realized because of the increasing complexity of deployment; grid computing can help mitigate this. Finally, chapter 3, “Business Value of Grid Computing,” analyzes the key value elements that can be used by enterprises to build successful grid computing deployment business cases. Both tangible and intangible gains are considered, for example reducing operational expenses, creating a scalable enterprise IT infrastructure, and raising customer satisfaction.

The second part of the book addresses some of the many details of grid computing technology. Chapter 4 provides an excellent overview of grid technology, describing different computing models (high performance, cluster, and peer-to-peer computing, among others), and how the grid computing model interacts with them. It also presents a preliminary view of the grid multilayer architecture, and of the main grid protocols associated with each layer. A taxonomy of grids, and some comments on application integration, completes the chapter. Subsequent chapters describe, in more detail, some of the grids mentioned in chapter 4, including desktop, cluster, high-performance, and data grids. Chapters 9 through 15 address grid services, including a description of the Open Grid Server Architecture (OGSA), a discussion of how to manage grid services, an introduction to desktop supercomputing and other applications, and grid management.

After an exhaustive look at the intrinsics of grid computing, the third part of the book covers the adoption of grid technology in research and industry. Chapters 16 through 19 present examples of the use of grids in the life sciences and telecommunications sectors, among others. Finally, the last chapter describes hive computing, a new approach that complements grid computing by the building of a transnational resource to host transaction-oriented applications. The book’s companion CD-ROM includes some tools to get started with this computing paradigm.

The book is well written and well structured, though a bit dense when read from beginning to end. I found it to be a valuable resource for IT professionals, as well as for those at companies who want to discover what the grid computing paradigm can do for them.