Mazda and NEC today announced that Mazda will start testing grid-computing technology. For the trial, NEC will incorporate the technology into Mazda’s core business systems to use the distributed IT resources of many servers as one virtual server.
This trial is a part of the grid-computing project promoted by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). It is one of the first attempts to use grid-computing technology in a corporate core system.
Although grid technology has been used mainly for advanced science and technology research, analysts expect the grid model to evolve to be able to run entire corporate activities.
Business Grid Computing
Grid technology that links together various types of computers at remote locations can create a single, virtual, high-performance computer that can be applied to various IT applications.
As part of “Focus 21,” an economic stimulus project of METI, the ministry started the Business Grid Computing Project. NEC is a member of this project, which lasts from fiscal year 2003 to 2005, promoting joint development of grid-computing middleware for business applications.
The project also supports global standardization of development results and the commercialization of business grid through trials linking users.
Construction and Evaluation
For the planned trial, Mazda will participate in it as the user while NEC will support the system construction. The system will be built and evaluated jointly by Mazda and NEC.
In a statement to the press, the companies expressed hope that by using the business grid technology, the system will behave as expected.
The ultimate goal of the project is to consolidate the operation of Mazda’s IT resources and allocate processing power to IT applications in remote locations when the volume of jobs at those locations exceeds system capacity there.
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