Service Oriented Grid Computing Model as a means of Cost Sharing in the Institutions of Higher Learning in Kenya

The use of distributed systems by enterprises and academic institutions has increased exponentially in recent years, enabled by factors such as ready access to the Internet and the World-Wide Web, the maturity and ubiquity of the HTTP protocol, and the improvement in secure communication technology. In the early days, distributed applications communicated using proprietary protocols, and system administrators used adhoc (improvised) methods to manage systems that might be across town, on another continent, or anywhere in between. Numerous standards have been developed over the years to ease the costs of deployment and maintenance, with varying degrees of success. Today, the key technologies in distributed systems are service-oriented architecture (SOA), Web services, and grid computing, all of which are seeing significant investment in standardization and increasingly rapid adoption by organizations of all types and sizes. Academic organizations in Kenya have seen increase in the number of students admitted as well reduction in central government funding to these institutions to purchase more computer systems and procure management information systems .In this paper we offer a high-level description of each of the technologies, and how they can be used to develop a cost effective co-funded dynamic system that can be used by the institutions. Keywords:service-oriented architecture, Web services, grid computing