What are the Uncertainties

Here we discovered some uncertainties facing GRID computing:

• Technical Challenges

The major challenges are, concerning security(authentication, authorization etc.),resource allocation, scheduling, access of remote data sets, policy management, fault-tolerance, failure recovery, site autonomy, QoS (Quality of Service). Additionally, the Grid must meet stringent, dynamically changing performance requirements and be far more dependable than current peer-to-peer networks.

One of the problems with any computing technology is getting the different components to talk to each other. Nowhere is this more critical than when trying to get different platforms and environments to talk to each other. This is one of the challenges facing Grid computing. Building a seamless worldwide infrastructure requires global consensus on grid protocols. the basic mechanisms by which users negotiate, establish, and exploit shared access to resources. The lack of standards has meant that a whole host of companies, developers, and organizations have been developing and supporting the technology using different techniques and solutions. In the relatively isolated worlds of each Grid computing group, this hasn't caused a huge number of issues. But in the wider world of extending the Grid computing environment, it has created divisions, disagreements, and limitations.

• Economic Growth and Globalization

Economic Growth has, to a large extend, influences on Development of Grid Computing Technology. Presently, 90% of Grid Research in done in the university lab founded by government. If economy is hindered,

1. Furthur government founding cannot be garanteed;
2. Consumer market will shrink, and commercial companies will reduce investment and be forced focus on cost-effectiveness;
3. All research fields will be slowed down by insufficient foundings, many of which highly demand the development of Grid computing;
4. International competition will take dominance of globalization trend. Less cooperation, less information sharing demand and as a result less demand for Grid infrastructure.

If economy is prosperous,

1. At least present level of research fundings can be sustained;
2. Application areas will be active and the demand of Grid Computing application will be reinforced;
3. Commercial companies will be able to put aside large investment in such fundamental infrastructure as Grid.
4. Internatonal Cooperation will be dominant of Globalization. More information sharing and resource sharing will be needed, which forces Grid computing ahead.

However, reality is never as simple. There is also possibility that under economic recession, the strong demand from business world of Cost Effectiveness will drive Grid computing ahead and under economic prosperity, people are simply rich enough to tolerent on Lagacy Systems and have less interests in Grid infrastructure. You can never tell.

• Substitution Techonolgy

GRID can be seen as the latest and most complete evolution of more familiar developments, such as: distributed computing, the Web/internet, clustering, peer-to-peer and virtualization technologies. Ironically, they, combined, can be used as substitutional technology for Grid as well.
For more detailed information, please refer to Basic Concepts under the topics of:

1. What other technologies are needed to help its development? the relationship between them?
   
2. Grid Computing Vs

• End User Attitudes

If Grid computing is heading for consumer market, then the end users' attitudes towards it would matter a lot. Take security for example:Will they be willing to share their computing capacity? How would they know that the background runing Grid platform would be secure?
By providing Grid based services, commercial companies are able to allow their customers rent an expensive software over internet and charge them on usage. Moreover, end users even don't need hard disk as nowadays, instead, commercial companies can provide virtual disk storage space for customers and they can access their personal resources real time whereever they are. However, would the customers feel their privacy is invaded?
These all are the issues that cannot be omitted when considering future development of Grid Computing. If they are security sensitive and pravacy sensitive, they would probably be hostal to the technolgy, and refuse to use it.

>>back>>
>>to Analysis of Systems Diagram and Key Uncertainties>>