For the love of grid – Joel Clark investigates the rise in popularity of computer grids supporting a variety of compute-intensive processes on the sell side and looks at how buy-side firms might benefit by deploying such technologies.

Grid has proven itself to be a significant enabler of business on the sell side and there are few tier-one banks that have not yet implemented a grid of some kind to harness their latent computing power. But as the banks have scrambled into the ring, the buy side has been lying in wait – no surprise there – and watching the technology evolve. Some funds and managers however, are now starting to dip their toes into the water and consider grid implementations. Experts are certain that the buy side