IBM (NYSE: IBM) 
said grid computing is moving beyond the early adopter phase and
announced today a series of "Think Grid" workshops to help its business
partners learn more about creating, selling and using enterprise grids.
The three-day workshops will be held in IBM Innovation Centers in Hursley, UK; San Mateo, California; and Waltham, Massachusetts; and will be scheduled based on demand, Leslie Givens, program director, Marketing & Communications, ISV & Developer Relations, told TechNewsWorld. They are open to developers and business partners who are part of IBM's PartnerWorld Industry Networks.
Demand-Driven
The program grew out of market demand, Mike Sheets, program manager of IBM Innovation Center, told TechNewsWorld.
"It's not IBM moving, it's the adoption of the technology. We don't see this as a statement about our company, it's about the growth of a technology." IBM, which divested itself of its software business in 1999, sells the hardware, middleware and services that the grid requires. It relies on partners for the software piece.
Last week, Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) , EMC (NYSE: EMC) , Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and
Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) announced a deal to develop grid computing technology
and establish best practice. The move, called "Project Megagrid," is an
effort to develop a standard approach to building and deploying enterprise
grid computing infrastructures.
Globus Developers Launch Company
On Monday, the creators of the Globus
Toolkit, the de facto standard for grid computing, went commercial, announcing
they had formed a company, Univa, to provide software, services and support 
for Globus software.
IBM's workshops are targeted toward ISVs that sell grid computing capacity to their customers.
IBM said solutions architects at its innovation centers have helped more than 25 ISVs ready their applications for grid. The company hopes to prepare 40 more ISVs for grid use in 2005.
Industries that have spikes of demand for quick calculations requiring a lot of compute power, such as insurance and financial services companies and technical and scientific researchers, can benefit from grid computing, Sheet said, adding that the distributed computing model also works well for business intelligence applications.
The workshops are designed around IBM's philosophy of "recruit, enable and
go to market." They will assist ISVs in everything from deciding whether
they want to build a grid to doing proof of concept testing, Sheets said.
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