Grid computing is a means to an end.
So says a recent report by research firm The 451 Group, in which it aimed to provide a state of the market look at enterprise grid computing, and the evolution of grid computing and deployment dynamics across different vertical industries, including financial services, telecom, pharmaceutical, digital media and manufacturing.
Early adopters of grid computing typically started using a grid for a specific high performance computing (HPC) application, explained Steve Wallage, director of research for The 451 Group in London, England.
For example, in the financial services industry there were Monte Carlo simulations, for the pharmaceutical industry, drug discovery. Most have started broadening the number of applications to other "embarrassingly parallelizable" HPC applications, he said.
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