Tim Bray gives a great write up of Grid Infrastructure projects. But he still doesn't answer Stephen's question: what is it good for?
I think the question is especially relevant for on demand 'batch grids', to use Tim's terms. A 'service grid' has uses that jump to mind immediately; scaling web serving content is one of them. But on demand batch grids (I built an extremely primitive one in college) are good for complicated processes that take a long time. I don't see a lot of that in my current work--but I'm sure my physics professor would be happy to partake.
Posted by moore at May 25, 2006 12:08 PM