Grid Economics and Business Models

In Grid Computing systems of heterogeneous networked resources are utilized. Computational resources, storage, memory and bandwidth are complemented with application software and content-oriented input from databases and web services. Hence such systems may operate in predefined and centrally organized ways, or coordination may be conducted in a self-organized, decentralized manner. Although there are plenty of idle computing resources available on the Internet, only a small percentage of these are actually utilized. One of the reasons for this could be a lack of reliability, availability, quality of service and security. Or the resources are simply not in reach of the user. On the other hand, also the absence of appropriate economic incentives to share resources is possibly a reason.