June 19, 2006
 

By Jeffrey Kutler

June 19, 2006 - Saying that it has completed testing with several of the world's top financial institutions, Platform Computing Corp. this week is announcing a new version of its Symphony grid computing software with real-time capabilities to meet fast-paced trading and risk management requirements.

The product, Symphony 3, is the result of efforts by Toronto-based Platform to extend its grid system--utilizing available capacity from a networked set of computers--from calculation-intensive analytical data runs to "mission critical" tasks across the enterprise. Other specialized grid vendors, such as DataSynapse and Egenera, have similarly been pushing their technologies toward enterprise applications. Platform is claiming a breakthrough in conquering "the day-to-day challenges of the capital markets with high performance, low overhead and scalability for operational effectiveness in an industry characterized by competitive pressures, regulatory issues and complex analysis," according to a press release to be issued during this week's Securities Industry Association technology conference in New York.

Platform did not disclose the institutions that beta-tested Symphony 3, but its customer base of 2,000 includes, in the financial industry, JP Morgan Chase & Co., BNP Paribas, HSBC and Societe Generale. IBM Corp. hosted the scalability testing of Symphony 3 on 1,000 central processing unit nodes, "demonstrating that large-scale grid deployments are possible today," said David Gelardi, VP of IBM's Deep Computing capacity-on-demand computing centers.

Symphony 3 will be available at the end of June, said Platform product marketing manager Reena Dass. Taking advantage of performance enhancements in the recently developed Platform EGO (enterprise grid orchestrator), Symphony 3 "lets you take hardware resources and consolidate them into a pool of virtual resources," said Dass, and the grid platform allows users to manage the available capacity according to priority.

The release includes the Symphony Developer Edition, which Platform calls "the first and only solution tailored for developing service-oriented architecture and grid-ready applications." Dass said it's now possible to "build and adapt grid-ready applications independent of the grid. The faster you can grid-enable applications, the faster you can get a revenue stream." Effective orchestration of the grid brings utilization rates up to 90 percent of available capacity, she added, versus 30 percent in the typical data center.

"Every second counts" when an institution is trying to run a complex pricing or risk simulation, noted Dass. A pricing application that formerly took seven hours to run can take seven minutes on the Platform grid. The flexibility of the resource management can "respond to demand, making you more agile and adaptive," she said.

"This is the next stage of grid," said Platform Symphony product manager Martin Harris. "Platform EGO applies grid technology across any grid in the enterprise, and it can serve any line of business. Our financial services customers have been using [traditional compute-intensive] applications for several years, and now those applications can be extended throughout the enterprise."