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Application Virtualization Brings Grid To The Datacenter

Wednesday, 30 August 2006 by Michel Roth

From GridToday.com: "While many commercial users of Grid computing use the technology primarily to tackle low-hanging problems like hardware utilization or providing CPU power to data-intensive applications, companies are increasingly realizing that Grid computing can be used to improve the performance of less data-intensive, but equally business-critical applications within the datacenter."

One such approach to applying Grid technologies to transactional applications is called application virtualization, and DataSynapse has been focusing on this idea since the release of it FabricServer solution last October. In fact, according to CTO Jamie Bernardin, the company is more comfortable describing what it does -- especially with FabricServer -- as "application virtualization," not "Grid computing."

Although application virtualization is described by both Venkat and Bernardin as a different approach to utilizing Grid technologies, both are careful to point out that it is simply an evolution -- far from the infrastructure overhaul many enterprises fear when thinking of Grid computing. "It's not really as much of a disruptive technology. In fact, it's the opposite," said Venkat. "It's completely non-disruptive to a roadmap they already are on that we are simply plugging into."

Reiterating application virtualization's close relationship to traditional Grid computing, Bernardin said: "You could describe shared resources as Grid resources, and whole initiative as Grid computing, except that Grid computing means a lot of things to a lot of different people and doesn't necessarily hit virtualization meaning right on the button."

Read the entire article here.