Risk Informed Computer Economics

Grid computing continues to hold promise for the high-availability of a wide range of computational systems and techniques. It is suggested that grids will attain greater acceptance by a larger audience of commercial end-users if binding service level agreements (SLAs) are provided. We discuss grid commoditization, the use of grid technologies for financial risk analysis, and the potential formulation of the grid economy. Our aim is to predict availability and capability for risk analysis in and of grids. The considerations involved may be more widely applicable to the configuration and management of related architectures including those of P2P systems and clouds. In this paper, we explore and evaluate some of the factors involved in the automatic construction of SLAs for the grid economy.