Grid computing is a distributed computing paradigm to provide effective utilization of heterogeneous networked resources in a dynamic, loosely coupled manner for large-scale, resource-intensive, distributed computation intensive applications. It provides workload management, virtualization, dynamic allocation of resources and centralized management.

Grid provides an environment for building geographically and organizationally dispersed high-performance, data-intensive, scientific and engineering applications. Grid computing comprises of tools, middleware and services to provide access to a wide variety of distributed resources, to support virtualization, management and remote monitoring of computing infrastructure.

Grid computing environment uses open standards and frameworks to design OGSA and OGSI. Grid computing adapts Web services as a key component to achieve integration and interoperability. OGSA aligns Grid with Web services and defines interfaces of Grid Services for developing interesting applications. More recently with the replacement of OGSI with WSRF, grid becomes suitable for enterprise applications, multimedia, ubiquitous and autonomic computing.