Initially it will be these institutions, but it will trickle down.
It is needed because projects are generating more and more data. I read something last week that mentioned the new collider (CERN) will annually generate 20x the amount of data that currently exists on the internet. That data needs to get passed around somehow. Google currently has massive drive arrays they will ship to companies to gather giant amounts of data then ship them back to load onto Google's servers, just because the internet bandwidth isn't able to handle volumes.
Applications like these are going to become more common. Grid computing will want to connect and share processors and data from around the world, and volumes of data we can't even conceptualize will need to be moved.
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"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
—WKRP in Cincinatti
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