August 29, 2005
By William Fellows, Principal Analyst, The 451 Group
The compute Grid is well understood today but much less time has been devoted to getting data where it needs to be, when it needs to be there, as well as to how this effort is managed.
Enterprise users say the ability to manage data on Grids is a key requirement for accelerating Grid deployments within their IT organizations. Some large enterprises are finding that limitations in data management capability mean they must hold off on evolving their Grid deployments. Those that have moved forward have usually done it either through internal work, or through customized or cutting-edge offerings from vendors. Most early adopters have long-term plans to extend their activities from initial beachheads to multi-application and cross-organizational Grids. But without proper data management tools in place, applications will not perform well on top of a Grid architecture, and the cost and performance advantages of implementing a Grid will not be realized. | 
