Here are some of the key value elements that
provide credible inputs to the various valuation metrics for
the customers to build successful Grid Computing deployment
case. Each of the value elements can be applied to one, two
or all of the valuation models that a company may consider
using, such as return on investment (ROI), total cost of ownership
(TCO) and return on assets (ROA).
Value # 1: Leveraging existing hardware investments
and resources
There is a tremendous amount of unused capacity in the IT
infrastructure at a typical enterprise. Grids can be deployed
on an enterprise’s existing infrastructure, including
the multitude of desktops and existing servers, thereby mitigating
the need for investment in new high-end systems and other
hardware.
For example, grids deployed on existing desktops and servers
provide over 93% in upfront hardware cost savings when compared
to high performance computing systems. Costs savings are not
limited to diminished hardware and software expenditures,
but are also derived by eliminating expenditure on air conditioning,
electricity and in many cases development of new data centers.
It is important that these savings not be overlooked when
comparing Grid Computing solutions with any other solutions.
The infrastructure upgrade expenses alone are usually enough
justification for leveraging existing computational resources
by deploying grids.
Value # 2: Reducing Operational Expenses
Grid Computing brings a level of automation and ease previously
unseen in the enterprise IT environment. Key self-healing
and self-optimizing capabilities free system administrators
to focus on high-value activities that are longer term and
have more impact. The ability for grids to cross departmental
and geographical boundaries uniformly increases the level
of computational capacity across the whole enterprise and
enhances the level of redundancy in the infrastructure. This
is a major breakthrough for system administrators who always
seem to be chasing systems outages.
The operational expenses of a Grid Computing deployment are
73% less than those for comparable HPC solutions. Many of
the existing cluster solutions are based on open source cluster
management software that is complex and unsupported. Operational
expenses associated with these deployments have been so high
that many enterprises are being forced to outsource management
of HPC systems to the suppliers themselves. Additionally,
both small and large enterprise grids are being deployed in
as quickly as a few days – with little or no disruption
to operations.
Value # 3: Creating a Scalable and Flexible Enterprise
IT Infrastructure
Traditionally, IT managers have been forced into making large
step function increases in spending to accommodate slight
increases in infrastructure requirements. IT managers either
spend the money for a system that remains underutilized or
force the users to live with an overloaded system until such
time as the load justifies purchase of another system. Neither
scenario is tenable in a fast evolving business environment.
Grid Computing allows companies to add resources linearly
based on real-time business requirements. These resources
can be derived from within the enterprise or from utility
computing services. Never again do projects have to be put
on hold from lack of computational capacity, data center space
or system priority. The entire compute infrastructure of the
enterprise is available for harnessing. Grid Computing can
help bring about the end of departmental silos by exposing
computational assets curtained by server huggers and bureaucracy.
Yet, while departments will be making their resources accessible
to the whole enterprise, the right Grid Computing solution
can allows them to maintain local control.
Value # 4: Accelerating product development, improving
time to market and raising customer satisfaction
In addition to providing cost savings, Grid Computing has
a direct impact on the top line by accelerating product development
at enterprises and helping bring product to market quicker.
The dramatic reduction in, for example, simulation times can
get products completed quickly. This also provides the ability
to perform much more detailed and exhaustive product design
– since the computational resources brought to use by
the grid can quickly churn through the complex models and
scenarios to detect design flaws.
For example, in the life sciences industry, companies large
and small have turned to Grid Computing to shorten the drug
discovery and development process. Grid Computing is being
used both in the drug discovery phase to screen suitable,
drug-like molecules against disease targets and also for clinical
simulation, healthcare ecosystem modeling, and pharmacokinetic
simulations. In short, Grid Computing is allowing drug companies
to get the most out of their R&D expenditures by developing
the right product and getting it to market in the shortest
possible time. Companies can save almost US $5M per month
in R&D expenses for each month shaved off the drug development
process. In addition, Grid Computing has been playing a major
role in helping the oil and gas industry process this data
efficiently and pinpoint suitable areas for drilling. In each
of the phases, companies have had to choose between the resolution
of data collected and the time to process it.
Grid Computing can save companies millions of dollars by allowing
them to not only collect and analyze high resolution data
to pinpoint drilling sites, but also to do it with great speed.
As indicated earlier, the cost of prospecting at the wrong
location is substantial. Many oil and gas companies today
are either replacing SMP based solutions or complementing
them with grid deployments.
In the government sector, agencies and contractors are turning
to Grid Computing to support security and intelligence related
simulation and analysis projects in such diverse areas as
bio-defense, weapons & machinery design, warfare modeling,
pattern recognition & matching, network load testing,
information extraction, and decryption/encryption. Grid Computing
provides these organizations with a way to meet the e-Government
mandate of finding more efficient, cost-effective ways to
contribute more effectively to the nation’s security.
Virtually all others sectors including financial, insurance,
automotive, entertainment and defence are also gaining competitive
advantages by deploying grid solutions.
Value # 5: Increasing Productivity
Enterprises that have deployed Grid Computing are seeing tremendous
productivity gains. Consider for example the productivity
gains of an electronics design and automation company –
run times of jobs submitted by its engineers were reduced
by 58% by deploying a grid. Corporate-wide productivity gains
by this reduction have been assessed at US $9M annually. Similarly
drastic reductions in run times and associated employee productivity
gains are being seen in grid deployments in a variety of enterprises.
In a product development company, a large desktop application
written in C and C++ takes about more than 45-70 minutes to
compile on a single hi-end user system [1 GB RAM, single P4
2.4 GHz]. Using a 50 node Grid this can be reduced to 10 minutes
or less. This would bring immense productivity gain, approx.
100 person-hours per day which is equivalent to adding 24
more persons, to the whole team which has 200+ developers,
at no additional cost of hardware!
Productivity gains serve as a crucial measure in any business
analysis because they have a direct impact on corporate bottom
line. Yet in many instances of technology deployments, calculating
productivity gains is more complex than science. However,
in the case of Grid Computing, enterprises have found it relatively
easy to determine the reduction in processing time due to
increased computational capacity offered by the grid and the
resulting emancipation of employees’ time. Thus, productivity
gains remain a strong driver for grid deployments.
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