The bitcoin and distributed consensus is just the early stages of a new paradigm for managing transactions and needs to go further to support enterprise-grade applications
Oracle promises a lower-cost way to run legacy mainframe apps with this newest version of its online transaction processing middleware. Luring IBM mainframe users to x86-based distributed computing is one goal
Grid computing has attracted a lot of attention recently as companies have begun to promote the concept of accessing unlimited computing power from anywhere in the world as easily as users now log on to the Internet. While that sounds revolutionary, it's really an incremental step with a great deal of developmental history behind it. In fact, enterprises of all types are already using a simple form of grid computing within their firewalls to economically meet processing needs.