In some cases increasing a firm's computational needs might end up in a lot of computational power which is not appropriately utilised. Why? Consider for example the utilization of a server machine. Most of the time its real processing capacity is not used at all. However maybe sometimes because a large and long process is executed or the number of connected users temporarily increase, the server might endup experiencing a processing overload. It has been estimated that on average a desktop computer uses only about 5% to 8% of its processing power (EuropeanCeo, 2005). Whilst, as Hendry (2004) reports, load balancing can aid in the distribution of processing and communication activity, similar servers that experience spikes in processor usage are barely used for the rest of the day and eventually end up with a large amount of unused computing capacity.

So the inevitable questions are, is it really feasible to increase and upgrade the firm's single source of computational power if most of the time the existing processing power is not being used? How can we ensure that a firm's computational resources are well balanced and allocated, so as to minimise wastage and eventually, justify any further investment in the ICT infrastructure?

The basic concept that gives insight to the answer to these questions extends back to the 70's when the notion of distributed computing was born. Today, we are seeing increasing interest among business communities in what is termed as, Grid Computing.

Definition

World-renowned organisations are promoting the Grid in a big way and several definitions can be found. It has become a fashionable term. Dr. Ian Foster, a professor at the University of Chicago and director of the Distributed Systems Lab at Argonne National Laboratory, a pioneer in Grid Computing, provided his definition for the layman as being the "technology to enable the sharing of computing resources across institutional boundaries". Research firm, Gartner, Inc., defines grid computing as a way to solve computing tasks using resources that are shared by more than one owner and coordinated to solve more than one problem.

The concept of Grid Computing was initially popular among academics, research and scientific communities. It was used for functions that required a substantial amount of computing power. However in these last years, an increasing number of organisations are early adopting and trying to reap benefits from this technology.

There are numerous examples where Grid computing has been applied. Among the research communities, Oxford University is using Grid technology to analyse 3.5 billion molecules to work out their cancer fighting potential. Same is being done by Stanford University in order to analyse the role protein plays in keeping people healthy. The search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project is another example. Here, volunteers download and install a free program so as to process and analyse massive amounts of data in search of evidence of possible radio transmissions from extraterrestrial life. When tallying up all the processing power that these PC's provide, it's like having one big supercomputer. Grid technologies also played a major role in identifying the world's largest known prime number. This was part of the Marsenne project where scientists identified the 43rd Marsenne Prime 230,402,457-1. - a figure that contains 9,152,052 digits.