Index Terms—Grid Computing, Grid Economics, Service Level Agreements, Financial Risk Management

Abstract—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 this Grid commoditization and in particular the use of Grid technologies for financial risk analysis. We also consider the potential formulation of the Grid Economy as a commodity market with due consideration for trading and hedging of risk, options, futures and structured products. Our aim is to predict availability and capability to introduce risk analysis for Grids. Such prediction, quantification of risk, and consideration of liability in case of failure, is considered essential for this future provision of Grid Economics – specifically, relating to the provision of SLAs through resource brokers, and comparable to markets in other commodities – but perhaps also more widely applicable to the configuration and management of related architectures including those of P2P systems and Clouds. We explore and evaluate some of the factors required for the automatic construction of SLAs. I