Grid gets €52m to become business' next big thing

The European Union has decided to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to the latest computing trends - it's putting €52m into grids.

The grid handout will be put into 12 separate research projects, with the majority of the funding being put into four larger projects, which will receive €9m each.

In the past, grid computing has been regarded as a way for the tech community to push forward not-for-profit projects that don't have resources to invest in extra computing power - for example, the Seti@home project, which hunts for alien life, and the joint venture between three universities and Met Office into climate change research, which encourages two million Brits to talk about the weather.

The biggest grid project ever launched is similarly designed for research - it uses 6,000-odd machines to investigate particle physics.

Now, the EU is hoping industry will be able to milk grid computing's potential for commercial reasons. The idea behind the grant is that universities and research institutions can come together to research how to best use grids for business applications.

Enterprise and Information Society Commissioner Olli Rehn said in a statement: "These projects will accelerate Europe's drive to turn its substantial grid research investment into tangible economic benefits. Greater use of grid tools is key for mobilising Europe’s scientific and technological capital to deliver greater competitiveness and better products."

One of the projects, NextGRID, will last for three years and aims to architecture standards as well as business and operational issues and will also, according to the project's website, "address the possible convergence between grid and web services... The overall result of the project will be a collection of new architectural designs, key middleware components, application support mechanisms, know-how and standards that will underpin the Next Generation Grid."

The project also hopes to make grid "as ubiquitous as the web is today".