Practical Guidelines for Evolving IT Infrastructure towards Grids and Clouds

In the previous chapters of this book the foundation of Grid and Cloud Computing were described and their application in companies was illustrated with examples. Grid Computing enables sharing of and access to distributed and heterogeneous computing resources as well as establishment of VOs. Through virtualization, heterogeneous pools of servers, storage systems and networks are pooled together into a virtualized system that is exposed to the user as a single computing entity. This entity can be centrally monitored and assigned to computing tasks. Overall, Grid Computing enables a virtualization layer that is placed between the heterogeneous infrastructure and the specific user application using it. Grid Computing potentially results in higher flexibility of computing resources and their more efficient utilization, and by that, enables an environmentally friendlier IT management in companies. Cloud Computing evolved from and builds upon the convergence of Grid Computing and SOC. It has the potential to substantially change the way how computing resources are consumed. Core features of Cloud Computing are integrated support for IaaS, PaaS and SaaS as well as user-friendly and service-oriented interfaces for developers and users. Cloud Computing offers a new, easy-to-use way for increasing scalability and flexibility of own IT resources on demand. Sudden peaks can be accommodated with access to external resources provided in a payper- use manner without additional investments in hardware, data centres and related human resources required for maintenance and support. Cloud Computing provides also new opportunities for Independent Software Vendors. They can develop innovative business models and offer their software in a SaaS manner without building up the necessary infrastructure.