Oracle GDK, an adaptation of the de facto standard Globus middleware, will be unveiled at OracleWorld this week, said Benny Souder, Oracle's vice president for distributed database development. The product will be available as a free download for Oracle customers, and Oracle will also be doing joint development work with the Globus Project.

"We want to make it easy for all our customers to be able to do Grid," Souder said.

He said Oracle is already a "happy user" of Grid computing, employing the technology to build Oracle database software. The company has used a Linux-based blade farm for about a year with great results and cost savings, he said. Oracle sees blades running the Linux operating system as the future of Grid computing, he said.

Oracle has heard a great deal from customers interested in Grid technology, Souder said, calling the technology "pretty much unstoppable at this point. I think this is the future of computing."

Oracle software has a number of advantages for use in Grids, he said, calling it "more resilient and scalable than other solutions."

Souder, who has spent 13 years in distributed database development at Oracle, said Oracle's transportable table space, unified sharing architecture, distributed database technology, applications portability, scheduler and resource management make it a natural fit for Grid systems. "Oracle resonates with the Grid," he said.

Oracle will also announce Grid customers this week, including Electronic Arts, which will use the technology for online gaming, and CERN, the Large Hadron Collider based in Switzerland. The company also has a partnership with Grid leader Platform Computing.