Opinion: Grid Confusion

All the marketing from major vendors appears to have left IT executives more confused than ever about grid computing.

A recent online survey by Forrester Research shows that only a quarter of IT execs at 149 large North American companies are using grid computing for its intended purpose: the processing of huge amounts of scientific or engineering data. The rest, well, they're using their idea of grid computing for just about everything else.

For example, 57 percent are using it to share data across computers and 53 percent say they're using it with databases and other back-office software.

Grid computing in recent years has often been described as distributed computing, which has blurred its true definition as the sharing of CPU resources across a network, so that all machines function as one large supercomputer.

As a result, a fifth of the respondents to the Forrester survey said grid computing has different meanings. About a third said it refers to clusters of computers, sharing data across machines or massively parallel processing.For now, there appears to be lukewarm enthusiasm for the technology. An InformationWeek Research survey of 333 business-technology executives found 87 percent with no plans to use grid computing this year.

Nevertheless, not all news is bad for proponents of the technology. InformationWeek's second quarter survey also found that the number of companies planning grid projects this year is up to 13 percent from 8 percent a year ago.

Maybe fewer press releases from grid cheerleaders IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems would help boost adoption and clear up the confusion.