25 January 2005 Industry heavyweights IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Sun Microsystems have joined forces in the latest effort to accelerate corporate adoption of grid computing.

The vendors will work under the banner of the Globus Consortium, with the aim of developing the necessary software tools for implementing corporate grids. The work will be based on the open source Globus Toolkit, which has played a leading role in the development of academic grids.

The consortium aims to convince large companies of the benefits of grid computing, which enables a group of computers to work as a single entity. To date, this has mainly found uses in the academic world, being used for such tasks as climate modelling and particle physics.

But the IT vendors are keen to push commercial uses of grid computing, citing possibilities in financial modelling or oil exploration.

The creation of the Globus Consortium adds yet another voice to those seeking for greater adoption of grid computing. It remains to be seen how the new consortium will work alongside the existing Global Grid Forum and the Enterprise Grid Alliance.