1. The Small-Business Case for Grid Computing
FOSE 2004: Advancing Service-Oriented Architectures Washington DC - March 23-25, 2004
The Small-Business Case for Grid Computing
Terry Bollinger The MITRE Corporation
March 24, 2004
Note: The author's affiliation with The MITRE Corporation is provided here for identification purposes only, and is not intended in any way to convey or imply MITRE's concurrence with, or support for, the positions, opinions or viewpoints expressed by the author within this personal presentation.
Copyright 2004 by The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved.

2. Copyright 2004 by The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved.
Grids… Who Needs Them?
Why bother with grids at all? Grids…
Increase the number of groups involved
Complicate development, especially of software
Significantly increase security risks
Yet grids are growing in popularity. Why?
Underlying driver: Falling costs of global data transport
As the cost of transporting large quantities of data drops towards zero, reasons for localizing systems disappear
Example: Rapid growth of telecommuting
But why bother? Isn’t local still easier?
No. Staying local with computing is like staying local with a market economy: It limits what is possible
Copyright 2004 by The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved.

3. The Synergy of Grids PAST: High-cost data transportation
FUTURE: Low-cost data transportation
RESULT: Synergy options end up limited
RESULT: Synergy options are maximized
Source: “Software Cooperatives” by Terry Bollinger
Copyright 2004 by The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved.

4. Grids and Small Business
Aren’t grids only for extreme computing?
Scientific community is leading grid development
Early focus has been on leveraging massive grid size
Role of small businesses is less obvious
How can grids benefit small businesses?
Flexible Capacity Model: Fast expand-and-shrink of capacity enables new options
Grid Specialist Model: Help other businesses gain access to potential of grids
Service Innovation Model: The grid as a parts store: Use it to develop new services
Worth noting: Grid computing concept originated in small efforts (Napster, to use Internet resources
Copyright 2004 by The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved.

5. Service-Oriented Architectures and Grids
A service-oriented architecture (SOA)…
Should be the computer-application analog of the highly successful humans-using-browsers Web model
A good SOA should make automated services readily accessible to other systems, just as Web pages make high-value information readily accessible to people
Low-level interfaces only are not enough, just as low-level data interfaces are not enough for Web browsing
Grid service interfaces increase synergy
Fixed, inflexible grid services slow recombination effect
Well-defined services interfaces encourage correct use
Flexible service interfaces encourage finer-grained uses
Diverse services encourages creation of new services
Copyright 2004 by The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved.

6. How Does Open Source Fit In?
Open Source and the Internet
The Internet could have existed 20 years earlier, but… … no one could agree on which protocols to use.
Open source software broke the log jam by providing the TCP/IP stack to businesses in a form (BSD license) that let them to build proprietary code on top of it
Open Source and the Grid
The Web goal: Enable global sharing of human data
The Grid goal: Enable global sharing of storage+cycles
The Grid goal may be reachable without open source… … but open source can enable sharing, as with the Web
Open source also encourages small-business apps by lowering the cost of Grid entry, possibly dramatically
Copyright 2004 by The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved.

7. Putting It All Together
If you business is in customer services:
Keep Grid data and processing capacity options in mind
Look for wins enabled by rapid expand/shrink cycles
If you are helping to build Grid services:
Look for ways to encourage broader use of services through selective, business-friendly use of open source
Use open source wisely to keep your own costs down
If your goal is to push the leading edge:
Don’t waste funds re-developing existing infrastructure
Encourage and support standardized Grid interfaces
Choose and use open source licenses with caution
Ref: Succeeding with Open Source by Bernard Golden
Copyright 2004 by The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved.

8. Copyright 2004 by The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved.
Resources
Software Cooperatives is an unpublished paper by Terry Bollinger. Interested parties can request a copy by ing Terry at:
Succeeding with Open Source by Bernard Golden is scheduled for release by Addison-Wesley in Aug It includes the Open Source Maturity Model (OSMM), a framework for selecting, assessing, and implementing open source software safely within a business setting. For more information, contact Navica at:
Phone: Post: Navica Mesa Verde Way San Carlos, CA 94070
Copyright 2004 by The MITRE Corporation. All rights reserved.