Grid Computing Goes Mainstream

By Christopher Lindquist

Sat, May 15, 2004CIO Derivatives can be a magic wand for money managers. Used properly, these complex financial contracts help maintain profits by keeping a handle on risk. But pricing them is the key.

For derivative sellers like Wachovia, assessing risk and pricing isn’t magic; the software that modeled its derivatives, grinding out the numbers, was complicated and needed to run thousands of what-if scenarios to determine end-of-day prices and to calculate the risk position for the derivatives portfolio. Locked into large, multiprocessor Unix boxes, the risk position calculation could take as long as nine hours. And throwing upgraded hardware at the problem wasn’t going to help much. "It would have cut the time from nine hours to four and a half hours," says Mark Cates, chief technology officer for Wachovia’s Corporate and Investment Banking group. "We needed it to run in under an hour."

The solution wasn’t pricey hardware; it was cheaper hardware. Wachovia linked hundreds of already-deployed desktop computers into a grid, taking advantage of every machine with available processing time. The results were stunning. A job that used to take all day or overnight could now be completed in under an hour, allowing Wachovia to make exponentially faster risk and pricing decisions.

Cates says that the grid solution cost Wachovia a fraction of what it would have cost to upgrade the large Unix environment?an upgrade that wouldn’t have produced anything like the same performance benefit. "We’re seeing ten- to twentyfold processing increases at 25 percent of the cost," he says.

Wachovia isn’t bleeding edge. Thanks to improvements in both hardware and software, numerous companies have begun taking advantage of grid tools. Business users, particularly in the financial services industry, are seeing the benefits of grid in faster responses, reduced time to market for new products, and lower prices per unit of computing horsepower. There are still hurdles to vault before grid goes mainstream (right now, many apps simply don’t make the transition), but grid is no longer just a tool for techies decoding the genome or designing airplane wings.

The Difference Between a Grid and a Cluster

The technology behind grid isn’t new. Its roots lie in early distributed computing projects that date back to the 1980s, where scientists would connect multiple workstations to let complex math problems or software compilations take advantage of idle CPUs, dramatically shortening processing times. For years, vendors and IT departments eyed this opportunity to dramatically increase processing power by employing existing resources. But only recently have the tools arrived to put general business applications to work on a grid.

Loading...
Data Center MarketSpace
White Papers
Cost Effective Data Loss Prevention
Learn how Data Loss Prevention technologies can in fact be deployed in a cost effective manner. Learn more »
Data Loss Prevention and Enterprise Rights Management
Enterprise Management Associates highlights the complementary values of Data Loss Prevention and Enterprise Rights Management as a strategic approach to information risk control. Learn more »
Save On Data Center Costs
Using a five step process one organization was able to eliminate more than 2,000 servers from their IT infrastructure Learn more »
Webcasts
 
SPONSORED LINKS
 

Developing A Dynamic, Real-Time IT Infrastructure

Learn about the VMware vSphere (TM) & Intel (R) Xeon (R) Processor 5500 Series

Bottom-Line Benefits of Virtualization

White Paper: The Building Blocks for Cloud Computing

New technology that addresses challenges organizations are facing.

Seven Ways ITIL Can Help You in an Economic Downturn

Maximizing the Business Value of the PC Infrastructure

Communications and Collaboration Needs at Business Organizations

Using Open Source to Deploy Web Applications

Mid-Sized Company CIO Community: infoBOOM!

Enterprise PBX Comparison Guide

Top-line Performance that's Bottom-line Efficient

Accenture: Outsourcing for uncertain times. Click to learn more.

White Paper: 8 Key Ingredients to Building an Internal Cloud

Building the Virtualized Enterprise with VMware Infrastructure

Top 10 Business and IT Drivers for the Wealth Management Sector

Oracle's Application Grid Technical Demo

Next-Generation Application Servers and Infrastructure

Application Infrastructure at Enterprise Organizations

Achieving Business Agility with Application Grid

Learn about The Information Technology Infrastructure Library.

Achieving Pervasive Performance Management

Automating the Generation and Secure Distribution of Excel Reports

Introducing the new HP ProLiant G6 server family

Accenture: Outsourcing for Competitive Advantage. More...

Getting Value from Outdated Networking Equipment

Read about virtualization and consolidation effort best practices

Data Center Optimization: Three Key Strategies

A CIO Executive Guide: Cloud Computing Looms Big on the Horizon

Taking the Service Desk to the Next Level

Why Data Loss is Increasing--and What You Can Do About It

Data Loss Prevention: A Better Way to Approach Security

Learn how to managing client systems in the enterprise.

Cloud Computing: Read about VMware's compelling vision & set of products

Enterprise PBX Buyer's Guide

Secondary Market Primer: Your Network at Half Price

Accenture IT Consulting: Logical meets technological. More . . .

Stop Application Fraud at the Source with Device Reputation

Learn how a virtualized enterprise can help your company reduce costs

Why Isn't Server Virtualization Saving Us More?

8 Key Ingredients to Building an Internal Cloud

Oracle WebLogic Server Technical Demo

Data Grids and Service-Oriented Architecture

Achieving the Impossible: Unlimited Application Scalability

A Middleware Foundation for Application Grid

Tips for successful virtualization management.

Smart Decisions: The Role of Key Performance Indicators

Gartner Shares Predictions for 2009

Accenture IT Consulting: Enabling high performance. More...

Top Five CIO Challenges

 
 
RESOURCE CENTER