According to Oracle Corp.'s latest Grid Computing Index, the number of Asia Pacific companies that have implemented or planning to implement grid computing increased by 83 percent from a year ago, followed by 45 percent in the U.S. and 7 percent in Europe.
Oracle's Grid Computing Index monitors interest and activity of companies towards grid computing, including related technologies such as server and storage virtualization.
The index is derived from three measurements within a company: level of knowledge and interest, foundation readiness and adoption.
Foundation readiness indicates how well businesses standardize their database management and operating systems, as well as application servers -- an initial step toward grid computing. Knowledge and interest determine if companies understand the benefits of grid computing, while adoption assesses the current level of grid deployment and future investments in the technology.
Asia Pacific was among the top three regions that scored the highest in knowledge and interest and foundation readiness.
Christopher Chelliah, senior technology architecture director for Oracle Asia Pacific, noted that in the Southeast Asian region, the telecommunications sector leads in terms of interest towards grid computing due to increasing number of services and efforts to reduce IT infrastructure costs.
Chelliah said telcos are interested in grid computing because they want to know how they can use the technology to create new markets.
'The telecommunication sector has always been one of the largest adopters of new technology. In the Philippines, Smart and Globe are leveraging a grid model to enable a consolidated infrastructure that can virtualize computing resources and provision dynamically at a lower cost,' he said.
According to him, there is still a lot of room for adoption, but lack of awareness continues to be the biggest roadblock. He said: 'Significant work still needs to be done to drive further education across the region about the benefits of grid computing.'
Lack of resources and security are also included in the roadblocks to the adoption of grid computing. 'Companies are aware of grid computing's benefits, but their problem now is how do they pay for it and how to make the infrastructure secure,' Chelliah said.