IBM has opened a Grid Innovation Center in France to provide European
customers with access to a Grid to explore the next generation of Grid
solutions. Solutions from Avaki and Platform Computing will be featured
at the center, which opened today.
The center is housed at IBM's Advanced Technical Solution Center in
Montpellier, France. The center will provide commercial customers with
the opportunity to explore the emerging area of Grid computing and
obtain access to a Grid to run prototype Grid projects, IBM said.
The center will make use of the latest Grid technologies, including the
Globus-IBM Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA), which merges the open
protocols used for Grid computing with the protocols used for Web
services. The center will also offer customers access to the latest Grid
software from leading Grid companies such as Avaki and Platform
Computing, and the latest open source Grid technologies from Globus and
Unicore.
Customers at the center will also have access to demonstrations of Grid
technology, workshops and technical briefings on Grid computing, with
access to IBM's team of Grid experts who can advise on specific customer
projects. The Grid demonstrations will also be available remotely over
the IBM Intranet so customers around the world wanting to understand
more about Grid computing can do so without having to travel to the
center.
"Opening the IBM Grid Innovation Center in Montpellier is a major step
forward in driving Grid computing from the scientific and technical
world into the commercial world, " Irving Wladawsky-Berger, vice
president of technology and strategy for IBM's Server Group, said in a
statement. "Customers see Grid computing as an opportunity to become
more efficient, reduce costs and ultimately run new projects they never
before imagined possible."
Based on open standards including OGSA, the Grid Innovation Center is
made up of Linux clusters running the latest IBM eServer xSeries and
eServer pSeries, including the eServer P690 previously codenamed Regatta
IBM's 'Shark' storage, and IBM's DB2, Websphere and Tivoli software.
These are all linked to the Internet with Grid software from companies
such as Avaki, Platform Computing, Nice and Science Computing, and open
Grid technologies from Globus and Unicore.
The Grid Innovation Center will also be linked to IBM's 'BlueGrid,' a
geographically distributed supercomputer linking IBM research and
development labs in the US, Israel, Switzerland, Japan and England, and
will benefit from global experimentation and prototyping of Grid
services and solutions.
Avaki, Platform To Be Core Technologies At IBM Center
IBM's Life Sciences Division has purchased multiple licenses of Avaki
2.1 for internal use and for client evaluation and demonstration
purposes, and Avaki said it is broadening support for IBM customers by
adding the IBM eServer UNIX servers running the AIX operating system to
the list of computing platforms supported by Avaki 2.1. Avaki 2.1
supports a range of computing platforms, including Linux, major UNIX
platforms, and Microsoft Windows.
At the Grid Innovation Center, AVAKI Grid software will be available to
the European customers of IBM and its partners for demonstrations,
prototyping, and evaluation. "Avaki's data Grid capability complements
compute Grids and interoperates with other solutions, enabling us to
offer a wide range of products that work together to meet market needs,"
said Philippe Bricard, IBM's manager of Grid computing solution sales in
Europe.
"Our work with IBM, which began with the Grid computing standards
initiatives proposed to the Global Grid Forum in February, is now being
extended by this effort to inform and educate more commercial
customers," Avaki CEO David Fish said in a statement. "Avaki's unique
combination of data Grid and compute Grid capabilities both complements
and interoperates with other technologies that will be available through
the Grid Innovation Center, enabling customers to explore a wide range
of products that work together to solve their specific requirements."
Platform will be demonstrating its Grid computing software solutions,
which integrate heterogeneous environments to solve customer
requirements. Platform experts will be providing workshops, technical
briefings and information to advise customers on Grid computing and will
also train the IBM sales teams on Platform solutions.
"More and more commercial enterprises have a compelling business case
for Grid computing to integrate their distributed and heterogeneous IT
infrastructure and improve IT efficiency," said Platform CTO Songnian
Zhou. "The current economic environment further accentuates this demand.
Over the past decade, Platform has demonstrated that distributed
computing, and Grid computing as an extension, can produce tremendous
business benefits."
IBM said the main benefits customers can gain from implementing Grid
technologies are: lower cost of computing due to improved resource
utilization; better collaboration within widely dispersed organizations;
the creation of virtual organizations; and the ability to tackle
problems of a scale that is not feasible today.
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