Grid researchers go commerical

The researchers who spawned the idea of grid computing will launch a company on Monday to commercialise what so far has been a very academic software project for sharing computing resources.

The company, called Univa and based near Chicago, is building its business on the Globus Toolkit, grid software that serves as an important foundation to dozens of supercomputing projects.

Rich Miller, chief operating officer of the new company, said the company will sell support and services for those who want to integrate Globus with their own products or computing operations.

Illuminata analyst Jonathan Eunice said some customers could benefit from the technology, though: those seeking to run quick but complicated financial analyses in areas such as telecommunications, financial services and transportation.

"I think finance is one of the real breakout opportunities. What is a risk-neutral price to buy a security? What is a good quality pricing that will yield maximum profit?" Eunice said. However, he cautioned, grid technology is still in its "very early days".

For those wanting to spend money on a grid project, hiring Univa would be like paying world wide web founder Tim Berners-Lee to set up your home page.

Univa's top brass - chief executive Steve Tuecke, chief scientist Carl Kesselman and chief open-source strategist Ian Foster - run the Globus project and jointly wrote a seminal 2001 paper, The Anatomy of the Grid. Foster himself coined the term "grid" in the 1990s.

Univa's definition of grid calls for software that links a pool of computing resources - including processors, storage and networking - that applications can use with some assurance that those resources can be relied upon. "It presents a way by which the application and those resources can talk to each other and agree on what that resource is going to deliver," Tuecke said.

A grid can span different organisational boundaries, he added, and eventually, users of the technology will settle on standard plumbing, just as the web is standardised on Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).

The key reason to use grids is to get more bang for the buck - by letting multiple applications share formerly separate resources or by automatically juggling priorities.

Univa has secured early-stage angel funding but expects to need more money from a venture capitalist next year. "The angel money is definitely enough to allow us to get running, but barring amazing success, I would expect going to a Series A financing at some point down the road in 2005," Tuecke said.

Univa's services will be available immediately, but its software product won't ship until 2005, Tuecke said.

Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com.