Convergence of SOA and GRID

If we want to predict the future we need to have a look, back in history. Industrial history shows that Grid Computing is inevitable. With the advent of grid based electricity all the turbines, steam engines that use to power up individual factories got replaced by external service provider for reliable source of electricity and on demand capacity . Same is bound to happen for Computational needs. Grid was around the corner for quite some time, but it was not gaining widespread corporate acceptance except for highly specialized computing intensive task like simulation or analytic works. It was used more as a high performance computing (HPC) The reason being applications were not geared up to take the advantage of GRID. Now with the rise of Service Oriented Architecture this barrier is slowly diminishing. GRID and SOA are on a convergence mode. The latest version of open source tool kit for GRID computing Globus tool kit 4.0 is based on web services. We can articulate GRID as an application which coordinates resources (CPU, Storage) between different nodes. There is a scheduler / coordinator /management Node, which schedules workload or jobs between different nodes, which uses the resources of those nodes, and gives the desired results back to the coordinator. There are a variety of methods to communicate between the Coordinator and nodes, but most system currently make use of web services. The GRID it self is currently based on SOA principle. Second earlier the enterprise applications were built with tightly coupled components and same application performing many functions. The deployment of these in a grid was a challenge. However, as service oriented architecture starting to become a main stream phenomenon, where the application is broken into components these caters to different services. Standard interfaces are built into these objects and methods to remotely access these particular services. It does not matter where these components are residing in the network. These applications can be become ideal candidates for grid based system , if the resource requirement is more then a single server can offer. With GRID it can be cost effectively spread across multiple servers , which will provide both computational power as well as eliminating the single point if failure. Amazon S3 storage service is based on web services, deployed in a grid environment. Each has its powerful advantages, SOA advantages are well known by now, and GRID creates an abstraction layer around the whole computing Infrastructure. However, in reality the adaptation level of both GRID and SOA combined in enterprises are quite low at this moment. According to one research organization with taking small steps in SOA the adaptation of GRID is high , but in organization where there are full SOA implementation , GRID adaptation is quite low . Nevertheless, the benefit of the combined will be hard to be ignored by the enterprises . GRID will pave the way for utility computing . Will SOA and GRID be poised to set a new Revolution or it'ss just another IT hype cycle . We need to wait and see ,but the concept /architecture behind the GRID will prevail . It might have gotten merged with today's much hyped CLOUD computing . I will write my next Blog about the Cloud computing .