Oracle has published its second Grid Index, charting understanding of and adoption of Grid Computing technologies. The survey shows Europe's score has increased from 3.1 in September 2004 to 4.39 out of a possible 10.

But this second report is also the first to show comparative figures for the US (4.50) and Asia Pacific (4.37), making clear that Europe is trailing the US and only marginally ahead of Asia Pacific.

Grid Computing technologies enable computing resources to be dynamically pooled to provide a more robust and flexible computing architecture.

Sergio Giacoletto, Oracle EMEA executive vice president, said: "Europe has made significant progress on the Grid journey. However, despite this progress, I believe that the next six months will prove crucial to this journey, both from a vendor and a customer perspective."

He added: "Using [Grid Computing] to respond to increasing global challenges is essential for Europe to improve its level of competitiveness. It is evident from our research that European businesses understand the advantages of Grid Computing, but it is just as important that they act on this understanding, as we believe that widespread use of Grid Computing will improve Europe's competitiveness. This is not the time for complacency. Oracle's research indicates that standardisation and consolidation - the building blocks for Grid Computing - are already widespread in the Asia Pacific market, which could give that region competitive advantage over Europe."

The April 2005 Grid Index reveals that:

• Understanding of the benefits of Grid has increased significantly in Europe over the last six months, but commitment to Grid and understanding of the return on investment remain relatively modest. This suggests many of the organisations aware of Grid are still trying to work out how it fits in with the business and IT landscape.
• The Nordics region leads Europe in the adoption of Grid, with a commitment index of 3.6. The UK, Benelux and France score 2.7; Spain scores 2.6 and Germany scores 2.5. Italy is lagging with a commitment index of just 2.27.
  
  
• Knowledge leaders (10% of the survey base) recognise a link between Grid adoption and service oriented architecture (SOA). 52% believe SOA is a pre-requisite for effective Grid Computing.
• Most respondents worldwide expect to see a return on investment (ROI) from their IT infrastructure in 18 months to two years. Only 9% of Europeans surveyed expect to see a return within a year.
• A lack of technology standards does not concern most respondents worldwide: only one in four organisations expect standards to be locked down before they will invest.

Despite the increased understanding of Grid shown in this survey, there is still much work to do in educating the market: 39% of those surveyed worldwide cited limited awareness within the organisation as a significant hurdle. A quarter said that it was difficult to construct a meaningful business case and 19.2% said that knowing where and how to start is a barrier. While knowledge leaders have moved beyond understanding the technology to wanting to build a business case, half of them said that difficulty doing so was the biggest barrier to adoption.

Oracle president Charles Phillips said: "When talking about a new technology such as Grid Computing, it is always easy for vendors to get carried away with the enthusiasm for their own ideas. We must always remember that such a fundamental shift as the move towards Grid Computing is not an overnight phenomenon, but subject to the same characteristics as other market evolutions, with visionaries, early adopters, laggards and so on."

"One factor that the Oracle Grid Index research does show consistently is that early adopters should expect to get early movers' advantage - the figures show that those who have taken the trouble to understand the idea and benefits of Grid Computing are driving their companies to derive the benefits more quickly than those that are waiting for the technology to become mainstream," he continued.

Oracle's 10g technology platform enables ISVs to build grid-enabled applications easily. It dynamically allocates processor resource across the Grid and directs it to where it is needed most.

The Oracle Grid Index is published every six months.

Where Next?

Download the full Oracle Grid Index Report April 2005