Open for Business
5 Nov 2003

Launched last Saturday, the National Grid is not just for scientists and researchers. Small companies and lay Singaporeans benefit too, explains Mr Peter Ho, chairman of the project and the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence. GRACE CHNG reports.

The National Grid is developing a business plan which will see the commercial use of this super cyber infrastructure.

Mr Peter Ho (below), chairman of the National Grid Project and the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence, in an e-mail interview with Computer Times said: 'We are in the process of developing an industry partner scheme... where companies can get connected to the National Grid Pilot Platform on a subscription basis.'

Companies collaborating with research institutions that are on the grid will find that they will get improved connectivity running their research projects, he said, explaining the benefits of the National Grid.

Apart from the National Grid aiding large compute-intensive scientific projects, small companies can also use the Pilot Platform 'to experiment with the concept of virtualisation of technical computing resources and engineering IT services'.

Another benefit, especially for small companies, is the access to engineering software programs that vendors will put on the Pilot Platform. The use of the programs will be based on a pay-per-use basis. This benefits the small companies as they can use the programs which they normally cannot afford.

'Subject to certain governance and charging models, companies may be able to view the spare cycle time...of the computing resource which they can tap into in order to meet unanticipated or peak demand. In this way, companies only need to buy sufficient resources to meet their routine use. If the demand for such a reserved pool is high, we can even invite hardware vendors to provide such services over the Pilot Platform.'

[Source: Computer Times, 5 Nov 03]