Road to Grid Computing Remains Difficult

Grid computing pioneer Ian Foster says that grid and cloud computing have not yet reached their full potential. Foster says the reliable infrastructure management that is needed for remote applications and data is still difficult to establish, creating an "energy barrier" between the providers of utility computing services and potential users. Nevertheless, he says progress is being made. "If you look at what people are doing with computing . . . they're not simply invoking programs that may run locally or remotely