Grid vs Cloud - A Technology Comparison

Abstract

Cloud Computing represents a novel and promising approach for implementing scalable ICT systems for individual-, communities-, and business-use relying on the latest achievements of diverse research areas, such as Grid computing, Service oriented computing, business processes, and virtualization. From the technological point of view Grid computing is considered as the most related predecessor technology of Cloud computing. Although, Cloud and Grid computing differ in many aspects, as for example, in the general idea of the provision of computational resource, which is in Clouds commercial based and in Grids community based, there are many similarities. In this paper we investigate the similarities and differences between Clouds and Grids by evaluating two successful projects, namely for the provision of native hight performance copmputing applications as Grid workflows and for the self-management of Cloud infrastructures.