Sep 2006
Report Twelve: Grid Computing – Adoption in the Energy Sector

This 451 GARS report, the twelfth in the series, examines grid usage and plans in the energy sector, which encompasses upstream activities such as oil and gas exploration and production, as well as downstream activities including transmission, market-making, utility trading and retailing. Oil and gas companies, particularly in their processing of seismic data and reservoir simulations, are well-known early adopters of grids.

In this report, The 451 Group has profiled a range of organizations representing global economic interests, from the 'oil majors' to national energy and IT utility providers. The report analyzes the status of grid activity at leading oil and gas companies, and assesses when and how they could move beyond high-performance computing applications. It also examines grid activity among electricity and gas utilities, and their future plans.

In addition, this report compares the deployment experience in the pharmaceutical industry with that of the oil and gas companies, since the two sectors seem to have many commonalities. While pharmaceutical companies have tended not to envision wider enterprise use of grids outside of core drug discovery applications, 451 analysts find good reason to be more optimistic about grid use among oil and gas companies. There appears to be more business pressure to make better use of resources in the energy sector, and the application of new techniques to ever-increasing data sets provides a growing opportunity for all kinds of vendors.

> Early-adopter case studies: 3DGeo, BP, ConocoPhillips, Duke Energy, EDF, Halliburton, Norsk Hydro, Offshore Hydrocarbon Mapping, ParadigmGeo, Schlumberger, Total and Virtual Computer Corp.

> Vendor assessments: Altair Engineering, DataSynapse, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Platform Computing, Sun Microsystems, SunGard and United Devices.

For more details about this report or about the 451 Grid Adoption Research Service in general, please fill out the form above, or contact our sales staff:

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About The 451 Group

The 451 Group is an independent technology industry analyst company focused on the business of enterprise IT innovation. The company’s analysts provide critical and timely insight into the market and competitive dynamics of innovation in emerging technology segments. Clients of the company – at vendor, investor, service- provider and end-user organizations – rely on 451 insight to support both strategic and tactical decision-making for competitive advantage.

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