The Department of Trade and Industry today embarked on a £1 million drive to promote the use of grid computing by British blue-chip companies.

The Government has already invested £250 million in the technology, which allows the contruction of virtual supercomputers by linking up under-used desktop machines.

A new taskforce, dubbed IECnet, is being funded by the DTI to promote its commercial potential.

Grid technology has traditionally been used for large scientific research projects that require huge numbers of calculations and that can easily be split into parts.

It has been used to explore the human genome, for complex calculations on cancer drugs and to scan signals from space for signs of extra terrestrial intelligence. It is estimated that millions of years have been saved in research time.

The Government has already invested £250 million in the e-Science research programme, which is responsible for developing grid computing resources in the UK.

The programme, based in Edinburgh, has been lauded as a world leader but there are concerns that companies have been slow to realise the benefits from the technology.

There is now a push to make large corporations aware of its commercial applications.

One large investment bank has already adopted the technology to power complex analysis of equities markets and hopes to save around £1 million a year.

"There is huge potential for the exploitation of grid within the UK," said Ian Osborne, the manager of Intellect IECnet.

"Not only will grid enable us to strengthen our position as a global services provider, it will facilitate the development of new delivery mechanisms for existing services. Reaching out and educating CIOs of the possible grid applications and business benefits to be reaped will be a primary objective of IECnet."

It has been estimated that on average only around 20 per cent of an average desktop computer's processing power is used. Proponents of grid systems say that billion of pounds in IT investment could be saved by boosting that figure.

"For years, grid technology has enabled labs and scientific organisations to solve complex problems. Now grid computing is also becoming a critical component of commercial and government organisations," said Mike Robinson, Linux & grid services leader for IBM UK.

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