High Performance And Grid Computing Don't Generate Broad Interest

Global enterprise buyer interest in grid computing grew slightly in 2007, but the growth was mostly in Asia Pacific, with nearly flat interest in North America and a decline in interest in Europe. For the first time, we also asked buyers about high performance computing (HPC) and learned that their interest in HPC is only a little higher than for grid. Grid and HPC continue to be niche technologies that only benefit compute intensive applications like risk analysis that are primarily vertically specific. Because they have limited appeal and no common meaning, marketers should resist the impulse to use grid and HPC as broad marketing terms, and instead lead with business value messages for specific solutions.