Is there more to grid than aliens and the weather?

Two news stories today highlight some current question marks about grid computing. This writer awoke to a morning news show on the radio asking: "Will computers soon be able to predict the weather far into the future?" It turned out to be a piece about the esteemed Met Office's strides to harness grid computing to forecast complex environmental conditions.

Then we hear that over at OracleWorld in San Francisco HP CEO Carly Fiorina has called for a cooling down - grid is being over-hyped, and that's not a good thing.

On the one hand, at least the Met Office's initiative will stop the SETI@Home project - "Hey look at me looking for ET while I'm not using my computer!" - being the best known example of grid computing. But when morning mainstream radio gets on board, you can bet the subject has been over-simplified.

So far, grid has made some inroads in academic circles but has yet to rock mainstream business. It will. The concept of harnessing 'sleeping' computing power on many machines, both large and small, is compelling and - in a networked world - feasible.

Sophisticated models of computing from players as mighty as CA, IBM, Oracle and Sun are now being espoused. Whatever each calls their initiative, and there are as many if not more names than companies, they nearly all make sense. Grid computing sits alongside and partly within some of these vendors' utility computing models.

Like we say, it will happen but everyone won't be talking about well-known examples for some time.