About
The iN2015 Master Plan, which was developed by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) , envisions realising an Infocomm Resource Marketplace (IRM), a vibrant marketplace for buyers and sellers of infocomm resources which can potentially change the way users purchase infocomm services. Grid computing can enable businesses to aggregate huge computing resources from commonly available resources, providing new capability and new business models.
This IRM is built upon commercial grid service providers and seeks to equip industry and consumers with on-demand and pay-as-you-use access to high performance computing capabilities, software, and immense data storage capacity. This means that businesses, including SMEs, no longer need to make hefty sums investments in servers and IT resources. The IRM will make IT much more affordable and accessible to all.
Objectives of Grid Services Provisioning
- Accelerate deployment of Utility Provisioning
- Develop ISV Ecosystem that enables Software as a Service (SaaS) to flourish
- Establish Singapore as a Shared Services Hub
The National Grid Pilot Platform (NGPP) was established in 2003 to share compute resources owned by research institutes and institutes of higher learning. Organizations contributed their idle compute-resources on a goodwill basis for use by the R&D community. With the success of NGPP, the move to establish the IRM will see a more concerted effort to realize on-demand grids for enterprises and academia, offering robust Service Level Agreements, support for proprietary software licenses and high availability of compute resources.
Grid Service Providers (GSPs) equip industry and consumers with on-demand and pay-as-you-use access to high performance computing capabilities, software, and immense data storage capacity. IDA had awarded three consortia to be the first National GSPs. They are led by Singapore Computer Systems Ltd, PTC System (S) Pte Ltd, and NewMedia Express Pte Ltd.
Grid Service Users leverage on commercial on-demand grid services provisioning from GSPs, saving cost incurred from under-utilized resources and improving time-to-market.
SaaS Incubation Centers help Independent Software Vendors to port their software from a package solution to SaaS. It provides test bedding for SaaS developers. The AxSaaS Incubation Center, established by AkSaaS, is the first such center.
Enterprise Grid Centers enable enterprises to adopt Grid-enable their applications to maximize utilization of in-house computing and storage resources.
As the number of GSPs and users increases, the Grid Exchange offers the community a platform to share, buy and sell Infocomm resources where forces of supply and demand will influence their pricing. The above building blocks will help to realize the IRM.