Cloud Computing vs. Grid Computing: Does It Matter for Developers?

Find out why developers should care whether the infrastructure supporting their apps is in the cloud or in a grid.

Should developers care whether the infrastructure supporting their apps is in the cloud or in a grid? Absolutely. Each has its pros and cons -- and until recently, the cloud and grid computing models did not combine the best of both worlds in a single solution.

GridGain, a small cloud vendor, claims to have a solution that merges the cloud and grid computing, allowing developers to maximize the benefits of both models on one platform.

Cloud vs. Grid Computing

Cloud computing and grid computing are scalable, employing multitenancy architectures and multitasking. Both models also provide service-level agreements (SLAs) for guaranteed uptime availability. Where they differ is in their fundamental offerings:

A public cloud enables companies to scale up to massive capacities in an instant, without having to invest in new infrastructure, train new personnel, or license new software.
A computational grid system enables companies to use software to divide one large computing job into many portions across multiple machines, which can number in the thousands.

The cloud model does more than maximize computing power (grid's main strength), as a cloud can provide many different services from Web hosting to word processing.

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