IDA in talks to develop National Grid
ConvergenceAsia staff
06/06/2007

The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) has announced that it is in talks with government agencies and industry players such as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and Oracle, to develop a commercial grid infrastructure that will equip enterprises with on-demand access to grids on a pay-per-use basis.

This 'National Grid', when ready by end year or early 2008, will place high performance computing, software-as-a-service, and huge storage capabilities in the hands of businesses.

It will see a more concerted effort between the public and private sectors to realise on-demand, pay-per-use grids for enterprises, with more robust Service-Level-Agreements than that of the National Grid Pilot Platform (NGPP), which was established in 2003 to provide compute-resources free-of-charge to both the R&D community and businesses. The NGPP has grown from an initial base of some 250 CPUs in 2003 to nearly 1,000 CPUs today.

Singapore will also be leading member economies of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to collaborate on grid projects that will drive common areas of interest and benefit APEC economies.

Speaking of this APEC Grid initiative for the first time at Singapore’s annual mega Grid conference, GridAsia 2007, Leong Keng Thai, Deputy Chief Executive/Director-General (Telecoms) of the Infocomm Development Authority, said the APEC Grid will allow the region to more efficiently harness our individual ICT capabilities, tap on shared resources, and thus help to strengthen APEC economies’ competitiveness in the global playing field.

These projects could include using access grids to enhance distance-learning, harnessing data grids to facilitate the archiving of digital assets, and exploiting PC grids to enable the solving of common computational problems.

The grid model promises optimum utilisation of IT resources and tremendous cost savings for businesses, he said. "We envision a future where grids are for all. No enterprise should be left behind because they cannot afford grid computing. To realise this vision, pay-per-use grids are essential. Computing, storage and software are ideally delivered as services, much like utilities such as water and electricity, so that no one, especially SMEs, need to worry about hefty investments in order to leverage grids."

Additionally, IDA has announced the formation of the National Grid Advisory Council (NGAC) to lead enterprises in adopting grid computing.

The NGAC, led by Richard Lim, Chief Executive of the Defence Science and Technology Agency, comprises 14 members who represent the full spectrum of grid stakeholders - the users, service providers, academia, and government agencies facilitating grid adoption.

The comprehensive representation will see the various grid stakeholders contributing their views as Singapore advances its grid development over the next three years.

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