Massively Distributed Systems: Design Issues and Challenges
Dan M. Nessett · 1999
The forty year trend in the computing industry is away from centralized, high unit cost, low unit volume products toward distributed, low unit cost, high unit volume products. The next step in this process is the emergence of massively distributed systems. These systems will penetrate even more deeply into the fabric of society and become the information power grids of the 21st century. They will be ubiquitous. Most will operate outside the normal cognizance of the people they serve and most will be based on embedded systems that present nontraditional computing interfaces to their users. They will be engineered to operate as distributed utilities, much like the energy, water, transportation and media broadcast businesses do today. The first deployment of massively distributed systems is likely to occur as support structures for these industries. Massively distributed systems will differ from existing distributed systems in important ways. Such systems eventually will interconnect bil...