Enterprises are outsourcing more and more business processes, and therefore need software solutions that enable their partners to access internal applications and resources remotely but still securely. Distributed computing power is needed for this, as well as the ability to connect up application processes across enterprise boundaries.
In view of the increasingly virtual nature of enterprise functions, which arises for example as a consequence of outsourcing services or administrative activities, companies are increasingly questioning the wisdom of basing their operations on their own, centrally run IT infrastructure. As a result, they are tending to buy in the additional computing capacities and services they need for each individual application case, not least because of the increasing cost pressures they face. This is precisely where service-oriented architectures (SOAs) come into their own for grid computing. While grid technologies help to standardize access to distributed IT resources – such as hardware, software, services, and data – globally across enterprise boundaries, service-oriented architectures offer the methodical superstructure for this, as well as a technical framework for implementation.
