IBM Grid Grows

IBM's is expanding its Grid offerings on several fronts.IBM announced Tuesday a new Ready for Grid Computing program, the expansion of Grid and Grow, and two new deployments of Grid computing solutions based on IBM technology.

Grid and Grow will expand with participation of SAS and Absoft Corp.

SAS will deliver an application on top of the offering, which is designed to bring grid computing to industrial, public and financial accompanies. Absoft has designed a High-Performance Computing Software Development Kit to complement Grid and Grow hardware.

SAS has also agreed to participate in IBM's Ready for Grid computing program, which tells whether an application is able to participate in a Grid computing environment.

The Japanese regional Higo Bank is now using an IBM information Grid solution, based on IBM eServer pSeries, Total Storage (Enterprise Storage Server and Linear Tape Open Drives), DB2 and WebSphere Information Integrator, to speed up customer loans while reducing the cost of the process.UniCredit, an Italian banking institution is also using one based on BladeCenter. It runs DataSynapse GridServer software for risk management. A total of 44 BladeCenter servers running Red Hat Linux Enterprise Server V3 operation system are providing near real-time calculations.

IBM's Grid projects allow customers to analyze the value of investment portfolios, unite research teams around the world, assist with drug discovery, to reduce product design times, decrease product defects and scale businesses to meet cyclical demands. Grids allow tasks to be accomplished in minutes, rather than hours, link global resources and provide up-to-date information.

Grid use is growing among financial companies and others seeking integration, federation and analysis of disparate information. It can also put dispersed data into a single presentation and application layer.