For years, Sun has been proclaiming that "the network is the computer". With the Sun Grid (www.network.com) becoming available in the U.S., this message is no longer pretentious or overblown. Every American with a big computing job and a Paypal account can now buying an hour of computing power for just $1.00. For the time being (?), Sun has to restrict access to U.S. citizens only, as the FBI (or NSA) fear that when such computing power is made available to the wrong people (read: spammers, terrorists,...) it could be turned into a weapon of some sort...
With this first commercial grid becoming available, I believe we get a peek of what the future will look like. Instead of having to invest in powerful hardware themselves, both scientists and start-ups can rely on grids. With massive computing power being available to all at low costs, more and more companies will get involved in data mining, searching for patterns in click streams, purchase behaviors, etc. In his article 'Competing on Analytics' in the January 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review, Thomas H. Davenport already showed how a new breed of competitor like Amazon, Harrah's and Capital One is dominating rivals by amassing and analyzing mountains of data. BusinessWeek, in turn, ran a feature on the increased applicatbility of mathematics, including statistics, in business. One of the world's largest consumer goods companies, Unilever, actually started to experiment with grids a couple of years ago, recognizing their potential value early on.
But apart from computing power, more and more applications are being transferred to the network. AJAX, which stands for 'Asynchronous Javascript and XML', enables a new type of web applications, which already begin to compete with client-based applications like Word and Outlook. So, it will not just be ASP-like offerings like salesforce.com that replace client-side applications, but also innovative services like AJAXwrite, AJAXsketch and Zimbra, which challenge traditional desktop apps like Word, PowerPoint and Outlook.
Hence, with broadband, both wired and wireless, becoming near-ubiquitious, the network may indeed become the computer. At the same time, Scott McNealy is to be considered a true visionary, foreseeing this trend as long as 10 years ago!
With this first commercial grid becoming available, I believe we get a peek of what the future will look like. Instead of having to invest in powerful hardware themselves, both scientists and start-ups can rely on grids. With massive computing power being available to all at low costs, more and more companies will get involved in data mining, searching for patterns in click streams, purchase behaviors, etc. In his article 'Competing on Analytics' in the January 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review, Thomas H. Davenport already showed how a new breed of competitor like Amazon, Harrah's and Capital One is dominating rivals by amassing and analyzing mountains of data. BusinessWeek, in turn, ran a feature on the increased applicatbility of mathematics, including statistics, in business. One of the world's largest consumer goods companies, Unilever, actually started to experiment with grids a couple of years ago, recognizing their potential value early on.
But apart from computing power, more and more applications are being transferred to the network. AJAX, which stands for 'Asynchronous Javascript and XML', enables a new type of web applications, which already begin to compete with client-based applications like Word and Outlook. So, it will not just be ASP-like offerings like salesforce.com that replace client-side applications, but also innovative services like AJAXwrite, AJAXsketch and Zimbra, which challenge traditional desktop apps like Word, PowerPoint and Outlook.
Hence, with broadband, both wired and wireless, becoming near-ubiquitious, the network may indeed become the computer. At the same time, Scott McNealy is to be considered a true visionary, foreseeing this trend as long as 10 years ago!
