Bangkok--7 Aug--PC & Associates Consulting
Oracle revealed that the rate of growth of organizations in Asia Pacific (APAC) adopting Grid Computing is higher than the rest of the world, according to the Oracle? Grid Index IV report released today. The study showed an 83% year-on-year rise of organizations in APAC that have implemented or plan to implement a Grid Computing system, compared to lower growth in the USA (45%) and Europe (7%).
Greater understanding of Grid Computing appears to be translating into action. Commenting on the APAC findings, Quocirca Research Director Clive Longbottom said, “The increased adoption in Asia Pacific is the result of greater appreciation for the value that Grid Computing offers to organizations, coupled with the readiness level of IT infrastructure that is already in place.”
The research shows that APAC’s Knowledge & Interest Index rose to 6.1 and APAC’s Foundation Readiness Index scored highest worldwide at 7.3. This has driven the highest margin increase for APAC in the Adoption Lifecycle Index , from 2.0 to 2.5. Futher analysis into the countries driving the adoption results show that Southeast Asia is a top scorer with almost 50% of its organizations having implemented or planning to implement a Grid Computing system -- the largest share of planned implementations worldwide.
“We have also seen significant uptake in our Grid technologies. In fact, for our full year FY06, Oracle Asia Pacific had more than 40% year-on-year growth in customers for Oracle? Real Application Clusters (RAC), one of the building blocks for Grid Computing architectures,” said Chris Chelliah, Senior Director, Technology Architecture, Oracle Asia Pacific. “Leading companies like SMART, Globe Telecom, and the Shanghai Centre for Bioinformation Technology are all leveraging a Grid model to enable a consolidated infrastructure that can virtualize computing resources and provision dynamically at the lowest possible cost.”
“That said, there is still a lot of room for increased adoption and the lack of awareness continues to be the biggest roadblock. Significant work still needs to be done to drive further education across the APAC region about the benefits and learnings of Grid Computing,” Chelliah added.
Overall, APAC’s Grid Index jumped the most, up four index points from 4.9 to 5.3.
APAC Sees Certain Future in Grid
Unanimous across most countries was the increasing acknowledgement of Grid Computing as a possible architecture into the future.
Almost 90% of organizations in APAC see a move to Grid Computing as a possibility; 60% indicated this was very probable or inevitable. Other highlights from the survey include:
- In Australia, the Adoption Lifecycle has made a significant improvement from 2.8 in the last cycle to 3.9 in the latest
- Greater China region leads the rest of the world in terms of Foundation Readiness Index of 8.4
- India has made the greatest Overall Index progress from 2.9 a year ago to 4.9 in the latest Overall Grid Index
- Korea scores second highest in Foundation Readiness Index worldwide, at 8.0 and made substantial improvement in its Overall Grid Index from 4.7 previously to 5.3 in the current cycle
- Southeast Asia ranks top three in the world in terms of Knowledge & Understanding and Foundation Readiness with an Index of 6.8 and 7.9 respectively
Grid Computing Matures and Readies Itself for the Mainstream
The fundamental research conducted is dedicated to mapping the world’s journey to Grid Computing. At a global level, measured on a scale of 0 to 10, the Oracle Grid Index has risen to 5.4 from its previous value of 5.2. All of the underlying indices making up the overall Grid Index — Foundation Readiness, Knowledge & Interest and Adoption Lifecycle — show steady increases in virtually all geographies. Analysis of the Grid Index numbers over its previous three cycles reveals a pattern of a maturing technology in the process of crossing the chasm between early adoption and mainstream use.
According to the global survey findings, Grid Computing has been embraced by the early adopters and now has such a large presence in this segment of the market that its adoption rate registered a relatively modest increase from 2.9 to 3.2 on the Adoption Lifecycle Index. However, feedback from existing users of Grid Computing reveals deeper penetration compared to the previous cycle:
- “Modest use in some areas” jumped from 10% of organizations to 40%.
- In total, 70% of organizations now deploy Grid Computing “in some areas”, up from 19.5% in the previous cycle
The Oracle Grid Index research reveals a major increase in pilot projects and departmental grids, as opposed to major migration of legacy environments; these “new” Grid Computing projects are at the leading edge, and suggest a significant and imminent rise in Grid Computing adoption as pilots get rolled out across other parts of the organizations.
Connecting SOA to Grid Computing
Just as Grid Computing virtualizes physical infrastructure, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) virtualizes information and application assets to deliver equivalent benefits. Global experts in Grid Computing see this link clearly, with 92% of Grid Gurus worldwide stating that they are also active on SOA.
“I believe that collectively, Grid Computing and SOA will change the way organizations use technology and will change the economics of business,” said Chelliah. “Grid Computing is an ideal infrastructure for deploying an SOA — an approach that accommodates today’s critical business need for flexibility and dynamism.”
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Note to Editors
About the Oracle Grid Index
The Oracle Grid Index is designed to map global progress on the journey towards Grid Computing. On behalf of Oracle, Quocirca carries out regular research, selecting and polling over one thousand organizations around the world on their knowledge of, attitudes towards and adoption of Grid Computing. Respondents within each organization are senior decision makers working in lines of business (business respondents) or in the IT function (IT respondents). Numeric data, derived from the answers, gives a single number from 0 to 10 — the Oracle Grid Index. The overall Oracle Grid Index is aggregated from three sub-indices which show preparedness ("Foundation Readiness Index"), Awareness ("Knowledge and Interest Index" and adoption ("Adoption Lifecycle Index").
The research is repeated twice yearly to establish trend information - this announcement is about the fourth cycle of research. As well as Grid Computing questions, Oracle uses the opportunity to ask respondents questions on related topics. In the case of the fourth cycle, the main topic was Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA).
Quocirca conducted 1,466 interviews with senior IT influencers and decision makers, completed in April 2006. 179 of these were conducted in the USA, 721 in Europe and the remainder (566) in Asia Pacific. Respondents were from a mixture of large multinationals and medium to large national organizations across a broad cross section of industry sectors.
For more information please contact:
Siriporn Suparuchatakarn Suchai Chelermtanasak
Oracle Corporation (Thailand) Co., Ltd. PC & Associates Consulting Co., Ltd
(0) 2696 8072 (0) 2971 3711
[email protected] [email protected]