Perspectives on grid computing

Grid computing has been the subject of many large national and international IT projects in the past. However, it seems that the general expectations in Grids have not come true. Instead in the view of many observers, the Grid concept is on the way to be replaced by Cloud computing and other as-a-Service approaches. In this paper, we try to analyze the current situation and to describe potential obstacles for the future development of Grids. Although pointing out shortcomings of the past we state that the concept of Grids is still valid and includes new developments like Cloud computing and virtualization. Further, we believe that future applications need this concept and that this concept in turn needs more research for its reliable, efficient and easy to use implementation