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Grid Computing: The Savvy Manager's Guide (The Savvy Manager's Guides)

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Grid Computing is coming and it's hard to separate the hype from the reality. Not to mention the fact that various companies have co-opted "Grid" to refer to things that are less than Grids.

Make no mistake; this is a technology that's coming, and you, the IT Manager, Engineering Director or CEO of a technical company need to know what it's about.

Enter Richard Wellner and Pavel Plaszczak with "Grid Computing, The Savvy Manager's Guide". This is a very good book to provide the context you need to understand what Grid Computing is, where it came from and what it means to you.

The underlying technologies, such as Web Services, are covered in a lucid and accessible way. Numerous case studies are presented to show how organizations have capitalized on The Grid.

One particularly compelling success story presented is NEESgrid which uses Grid Computing for earthquake research. Massive computing resources are applied to analysis and simulation using pools of computers from around the world and the huge data sets created are made available on The Grid to a widely distributed community of scientists.

Plaszczak and Wellner are well qualified to write this book. Both worked under Dr. Ian Foster at Argonne National Laboratory as developers of the Globus Toolkit and both are now involved in commercial applications of Grid Computing. There is no better mentor than Dr. Foster, who coined the term "The Grid" and is co-author of the seminal theoretical work on the subject with Dr. Karl Kesselman of USC.

If your are looking to come to grips with a powerful new technology that is destined to affect the world of computing profoundly you should get a copy "Grid Computing, The Savvy Manager's Guide".

The hundreds of grids deployed over the years in research and academic domains provide ample proof of the benefits that may be realized through the use of grid technologies. But these successes are sometimes overshadowed by recent market hype over grid computing that may lead one to question it's maturity, readiness, and applicability to enterprise IT needs. This book clearly illustrates the applicability of grid technology to the commercial world.

In the first half of the book, the authors do a great job of walking the reader through the various technologies used in grid computing solutions and proceed to highlight how grids fit into the commercial market. The remainder of the book serves as a concise reference for IT professionals considering grid in their environment. It describes all aspects that should be considered in making the decision to deploy grid technology, and provides helpful advice on "selling" grid to others within the organization. Particularly noteworthy is the discussion of risks in a grid computing project, and ways in which they may be mitigated.

Overall, a well-written and very relevant book that belongs on every IT professional's bookshelf.

I have appreciated this book, since in my daily work I often need to give introductory talks on Grid technology for industrial and commercial applications. This book does a good job at introducing the technology and reviewing the present major trends. It covers in particular the recent convergency towards web services and gives some good examples of practical applications of Grid technology in the industrial domain. It will be very imporant to keep the information up to date in a very rapiddly changing environment. For this the companion electronic book on the web is very useful and appropriate. A possible suggestion for a future edition will be to cover more the European experience on Grid technology which in this first book is a bit neglected in favour of a rather comprehensive coverage of the US experience. Understandable looking at the backgroud of the two authors.

The authors have done an excellent job of describing "The Grid" in terms that specialists and nonspecialists can understand. From the basic rationale to the technology to the various applications, the book gives a clear picture of the current status of the Grid and provides a peek at the opportunities that the era of cyberenvironments will usher in.

I've worked with both authors, and feel that they've produced an excellent introduction to the Grid for non-geeks. Grid computing has been hot and hyped for some time now, and it's good to have in-depth explorations of what it is, what it can do, and where its appropriate.