IBM drives grid computing for business with 10 new offerings

Mumbai: IBM is driving the benefits of grid computing beyond its academic and research roots and into business enterprises with the introduction of ten grid offerings targeting key industries — aerospace, automotive, financial markets, government and life sciences.

IBM India Ltd and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) India have a strategic partnership for developing grid computing technology. This grid computing technology will be focused on government applications and solutions, and applications in the scientific and engineering fields such as life sciences and climate modelling for the Indian subcontinent.

Additionally, IBM (www.ibm.com/grid) has announced that it’s working with Charles Schwab on grid computing solutions at the financial services giant’s headquarters in San Francisco. The first grid research and development project, just completed there, focused on maximising processor efficiency and reduced the processing time on a financial application from more than four minutes to 15 seconds. The two companies are now looking to expand grid research into other areas of Charles Schwab’s business.

IBM also announced that it is working closely with two Grid middle-ware vendors — Platform Computing and DataSynapse — both of which will play key roles in helping IBM deploy grids in the enterprise. IBM also has agreements with middle-ware providers Avaki, Entropia and United Devices.

“The benefits of grid computing for e-business on demand are here; it’s now and it’s real,” says M Ganesh, country manager, enterprise systems group, IBM India. “Working with our ISV business partners and the open Globus community, we’ve developed a set of structured capabilities and offerings that leverage IBM’s unmatched experience in deploying IT solutions to help businesses reap the benefits of Grid computing. The commercial market for grids to set to expand, particularly with the introduction of the Globus Toolkit 3.0, the first OGSA-compliant Grid middle-ware.”

New grid offerings
IBM’s go-to-market strategy in 2003 is built around five grid focus areas that address the needs of the aerospace, automotive, financial markets, government and life science industries. These focus areas, which were based on customer feedback and customer grid implementations, are research and development, engineering and design, business analytics, enterprise optimisation, and government development.

Based on these focus areas, IBM is introducing 10 grid offerings for the following markets:

Financial markets (business analytics and enterprise optimisation focus). For the financial services market, IBM is offering two grid options: an analytics acceleration grid and an IT optimisation grid. The analytics acceleration grid can enhance a company’s competitiveness and agility in the financial trading market by accelerating its trading analytics operations and increasing its computational throughput. The IT optimisation grid will help customers exploit available, under-utilised compute and storage resources.

Life sciences (research and development focus). For the life sciences industry, IBM is offering two grid options: one for analytics acceleration and another for information accessibility. The analytics acceleration grid is designed to dramatically increase the number of calculations processed, which can result in accelerated times for drug discovery. The information accessibility grid can maximise the exploitation of existing data resources and assets by providing unified data access during the querying process of non-standard data formats.

Automotive and aerospace (engineering and design focus). For the automotive and aerospace industries, IBM is offering an engineering design grid as well as a design collaboration grid. The engineering design grid will help companies in these industries to manage their costs by optimising the use of their investment in existing infrastructure. The design collaboration grid will enable data sharing and distributed workflow across partners, which will enable faster design processes.

Governments (government development focus). For government agencies, IBM is offering an information access grid that can maximise use of existing data resources and other assets across the enterprise to enable lead identification through data mining and associating diverse data sources and simplifying data access through a unified data and file interface.

In addition to the nine industry-targeted offerings above, IBM is delivering a tenth offering in the form of grid innovation workshops. Customised to each organisation, the workshops are designed to help companies examine how grid technologies can impact their organisation.

These grid offerings are designed to operate in a heterogeneous environment and will incorporate the open grid services architecture (OGSA). IBM Global Services will support all elements of a grid implementation with both IBM and non-IBM hardware and software.

New partners
The companies that IBM is working to deploy grid solutions in the selected industries that IBM is targeting are:
Platform computing is a 10-year-old company that generates more than $50 million a year delivering grid solutions for more than 1,500 customers worldwide. Platform will be part of IBM’s worldwide go-to-market grid strategy and is currently the only vendor that will engage in all five industries IBM is targeting: aerospace, automotive, financial markets, government and life sciences.

DataSynapse, a New York City-based provider of grid and distributed computing solutions will be part of IBM’s go-to-market strategy in industries requiring business analytics grids, specifically the financial services sector.

C-DAC is a research and development institution involved in the design, development and deployment of advanced information technology (IT) based solutions. C-DAC, set up in 1988, is a scientific society of the department of information technology, ministry of communications and information technology, Government of India.

IBM also has agreements with three other Grid middle-ware vendors — Avaki, Entropia and United Devices — and will engage with these vendors in industries where they offer the greatest expertise.

About IBM
IBM is the world’s largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. Drawing on resources from across IBM and key business partners, IBM offers a wide range of services, solutions and technologies that enable customers, large and small, to take full advantage of the new era of e-business.