The typical IT department runs a diverse set of software apps, each with its own dedicated hardware. This creates isolated islands of infrastructure, resulting in server utilisation rates of less than 10 percent. This is an inefficient use of resources, and can also lead to reliability hassles and difficulties with diagnosing problems.

 The right foundational middleware can help this situation. Traditionally, middleware has been designed around "one application per server" practices – practices that are in fact quite old, and not suitable for today’s data centres.

 Many companies are turning to a new concept called application grid: an infrastructure layer beneath the ...