IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Univa and Nortel Networks have announced the formation of the Globus Consortium a spin-off of the Globus Alliance concept. In addition to funding code development, the Consortium will develop grid computing tools for businesses such as the Globus Toolkit, an open standards building block for commercial grid computing. With the help of standards bodies like the Global Grid Forum, Globus will promote grid computing in the corporate world, educating businesses about the potential benefits of the technology. In the end this could help universities, companies, and individual users run complicated tasks without breaking the bank on new hardware and software.

Grid computing is widely used for high-performance computing tasks such as climate simulation, Technology companies believe grid technology can be used to power business applications such as drug research, financial risk analysis, and oil exploration.

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