The new offerings includes the introduction of new solutions for four industries -- petroleum, electronics, higher education and agricultural chemicals. In addition, IBM announced that more than 35 companies, including networking giant Cisco Systems, will join IBM to form the foundation of a Grid ecosystem that is designed to foster Grid computing for businesses.

RBC Insurance -- RBC Insurance took an existing application and Grid-enabled it based on IBM eServer xSeries and middleware from IBM Business Partner Platform Computing. The integrated solution allowed RBC Insurance to reduce by 75 percent the time spent on job scheduling, and by 97 percent the time spent processing an actuarial application. Based on that success, RBC Insurance is now looking to expand the IBM and Platform Computing solution across additional applications and business units to improve efficiencies and to increase customer satisfaction.

"IBM and Platform Computing Grid-enabled our valuation application and supporting infrastructure for immediate results," said Keith Medley, Head of Insurance Technology, RBC Insurance. "With the integrated solution, we have been able to reduce a 2.5 hour job to 10 minutes, and an 18 hour job to 32 minutes. We are now looking to move to a production environment. By virtualizing applications and infrastructure, we anticipate being able to deliver higher quality services to our clients faster than ever before, which will significantly impact our competitive edge."

Royal Dutch Shell -- IBM worked with Royal Dutch Shell to build a reusable software toolkit that works as a wrapper around existing applications, creating a Grid-enabled infrastructure for their seismic interpretation applications. The solution, based on IBM eServer xSeries running the Globus Toolkit and Linux, cut the processing time of seismic data while improving the quality of the data, ultimately allowing Royal Dutch Shell to focus its employees on key scientific problems.

"Grid computing is important to Shell because it offers the potential to create a truly unlimited resource, with a uniform interface to a variety of services," said Jacob Buur, principal research physicist, Shell International and Production B.V. "This is a significant opportunity for Shell to engage its independent companies in closer cooperation."

The Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc. -- KEPCO, Japan's second-largest electric utility, is working with IBM to develop an information-based Grid that will allow KEPCO to federate and virtualize various data sources across the enterprise. The Grid solution will integrate information distributed across departments and affiliated companies to enable information sharing using existing systems and to develop new businesses more rapidly at a minimum cost.

New Grid Offerings for Industries
Agricultural Chemical (Research and Development and Business Analytics Focus) -- Analytics Acceleration Grid and an Information Access Grid. The Analytics Acceleration Grid can help speed scientific discoveries, including producing high value seeds, by improving computing and storage resources. The Information Access Grid is designed to help customers maximize exploitation of data resources by efficiently managing data volumes and non-standard data formats required for new discovery in fields such as molecular biology.

Electronics (Engineering and Design Focus) -- Engineering Design Grid and Design Collaboration Grid. The Engineering Design Grid will help electronics companies aggregate disparate elements such as compute and data resources from suppliers, OEMs and contract electronics manufacturers (CEMs) to create a single unified system to help accelerate new product introductions. The Design Collaboration Grid will enhance data sharing across partners requiring intensive manufacturing processes and electronic design automation (EDA) tools.

Higher Education (Research and Development Focus) -- University Collaboration Grid, which enables seamless sharing of large amounts of raw research data among researchers and across institutions by providing a flexible and expandable infrastructure that can adapt to changing research requirements.

Petroleum (Engineering Design Focus and IT Optimization) -- Geophysical Processing and Analysis Grid and an IT Optimization Grid. The Geophysical Processing and Analysis Grid is designed to reduce seismic imaging time and improve reservoir management results by providing better access to key analytical tools and applications, available when and where required, and scalable to meet the demands of projects that require 'peak' resources. The IT Optimization Grid can help customers exploit underutilized compute and storage resources while improving flexibility and scalability.

These are additional industries to the aerospace, automotive, financial markets, government and life science industries which were announced back in January.

IBM also announced that more than 35 new and existing Business Partners and other vendors will form the foundation of the developing IBM Grid ecosystem as the company recognize that no one company can drive commercial adoption of Grid computing. Cisco, Platform, Accelrys, Calypso Technology, Force10 Networks, Landmark Graphics, Mercury Interactive, MSC.Software are amongst some which was mentioned.