The Hindu Business Line : Satyam sets up grid computing facility

Mr G.B. Prabhat (left), Director, Consulting and Enterprise Solutions, Satyam Computer Services, and Mr S. Sundararaj, Leader-Grid Computing Practice, at a press conference in Chennai on Wednesday. - - Bijoy Ghosh

Chennai , Dec. 22

SATYAM Computer Services Ltd has has set up a dedicated grid computing practice and a grid computing facility in Chennai, according to its Director, Consulting and Enterprise Solutions, Mr G.B. Prabhat.

The Hyderabad-based software firm has also formed an alliance with the US-based United Devices, a leader in grid solution, and is discussing partnerships with other leaders in the field, he told newspersons.

Grid computing is applying the resources of many computers in a network to solve a single problem at the same time. This could be a scientific or a technical problem that requires a great number of computer processing cycles or access to large amounts of data, he said.

Grid computing offers enormous opportunity for Satyam, which plans to recruit employees "in hundreds" for the practice in the next 12 months. The company recently executed a grid project for Dr Reddy's Laboratories, and will target clients in India and abroad for grid computing implementations. Satyam will offer clients consulting, design and implementation, conversion and maintenance in grid computing, he told newspersons.

The key application areas for grid include life sciences, Government, financial services, geo-sciences and manufacturing sectors. He declined to give the company's investment in grid computing and projected revenue from the new practice.

According to Mr S. Sundararaj, Leader, Grid Computing Practice, Satyam Computer, in most companies only 5-10 per cent of computational resources are utilised, and the rest goes waste. The grid acts as a coordinator, and all the resources can be brought into a grid, making a single virtual system across the organisation.

In a conventional set-up, for a stand alone 72-1.2 Ghz CPUs server the list price is $3.616 million. However, in an equivalent grid solution of 75 grid nodes and of 1.2 Ghz computer, the software cost would be $80,000 — a saving of about $3 million in information technology spending for a company, he said.

In 2001, Forbes predicted the global grid to be a $20 trillion industry by 2020, and IDC, a research firm, estimates the grid market to exceed $12 billion by 2007. Only 12 per cent of global companies say they have either deployed or plan a grid computing implementation within the next year, says Evans Data, a research firm.

A well-known example of grid computing in the public domain is the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) @Home project in which thousands of people are sharing the unused processor cycles of their personal computers in the vast search for signs of "rational" signals from outer space, he said.