Dell Sets Fiorina's Hype Meter Racing.

Carly Fiorina's hype meter goes off when CEOs talk about standards in grid computing, especially if their company spends minuscule amounts of revenue on R&D.

Hewlett Packard Co's CEO said yesterday success in grid computing would rely on massive amounts of engineering and development effort to solve tens of thousands of hard technical problems in hardware, software and management. Not just standards.

Success will also take more than big servers and having a big rack - and she should know, according to Fiorina herself.

Addressing OracleWorld in San Francisco, California, Fiorina became the second systems vendor to jump on comments from Michael Dell justifying his company's $500m annual R&D budget while simultaneously promoting grid computing.

Dell said earlier this week that his company is working with others to develop standards for server blades, an element of computing grids. Dell also said he can utilize industry-wide R&D on Intel architectures and operating systems, to deliver two-, four- and eight-way servers.

Dell, who limped on the OracleWorld stage with a bandaged and broken foot following a recent horse riding accident, was immediately taken to task by Sun Microsystems Inc's CEO Scott McNealy on Tuesday.

Yesterday, Fiorina jumped in, saying grid today is more hype than reality and warning her "hype meter always goes off" when someone claims R&D "doesn't matter". Those who suggest R&D doesn't matter are those trying to "keep up", she said.

Exploiting Dell's personal injury, Fiorina added: "We believe grid is the next-generation architectural change. It seems, some may be trying to ride that horse before they are ready. That's a good way to hurt your foot!"

Fiorina added her "hype meter" also goes off when someone "says they have implemented a rack with a lot of servers". Drawing a ripple of suggestive laughter from the OracleWorld audience Fiorina added: "I will tell you, a nice rack will only get you so far."

HP's chief executive predicted grid computing is a three- to five-year journey, to resolve hard technology problems. She listed the five hurdles to grid as complexity of things like the up-coming open source Globus Technology Kit 3.0, robustness of Globus, trust and security, operation in an heterogeneous environment, and use of open standards.

She added HP is contributing technologies to help resolve the problems. These include the smart framework for object group (smart FROG) technology to reduce complexity for programmers building grid systems and the proposed Web Services Management Framework standard, driven by HP, to manage different platforms and expanding OpenView.

Fiorina hinted, too, at acquisitions to help expand OpenView's features - HP recently announced the purchase of web services management specialist Talking Blocks Inc, canceling its inhouse Web Services Management Engine. "We are the leader in infrastructure platform management," she claimed. "We will continue that with acquisitions."