IBM and Platform expand relationship to enhance workload management for Blue Gene Supercomputing

Seattle, Washington, November 15, 2005 – Platform Computing, the global leader for grid computing software solutions, today announced the integration of Platform LSF with IBM’s eServer Blue Gene /L Solution. Powering many of the world’s top supercomputers, IBM’s Blue Gene /L is optimized for bandwidth, scalability and power efficiency. Through integrating with Platform LSF, powered by Platform Enterprise Grid Orchestrator (EGO), Blue Gene /L now has access to the industry’s leading solution for resource management and orchestration of compute and data intensive applications. This integration provides Blue Gene /L users with the ability to concurrently process multiple jobs of variable size – which in turn improves utilization and increases response time. In addition, Platform LSF also extends advanced workload management across heterogeneous platforms. The integration of IBM Blue Gene and Platform LSF is expected to be complete in Q1 2006.

"IBM Blue Gene was designed to deliver new levels of performance and scalability while maintaining impressive power consumption standards," said Herb Schultz, Program Director, Deep Computing Marketing, IBM. "Through working with software providers such as Platform Computing, we can leverage our respective strengths to enhance the overall workload management experience for Blue Gene customers – and can make it easier and more attractive for Platform LSF customers to deploy the Blue Gene solution."

The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) provides research, facilities, and services for the atmospheric and Earth sciences community. Currently, NCAR employs IBM Blue Gene to test the viability of the Blue Gene architecture for various geosciences codes including climate simulation software. NCAR uses Platform LSF for managing batch processing on several of its production systems. With the impending integration of Platform LSF and Blue Gene, NCAR will be able to use the same tools to manage both Blue Gene and the rest of their production HPC environment.

"As atmospheric research takes a more prominent role on the world stage, it is increasingly important that we take steps to ensure we have adequate computational resources available for geoscience simulation," said Richard Loft, Deputy Director of Research and Development in the Scientific Computing Division at NCAR. "The impending integration of Platform LSF and IBM Blue Gene will allow us to harness the full potential of our HPC environment and facilitate our ability to manage multiple workloads. These enhancements will give us the ability to more tightly integrate Blue Gene/L with our existing systems."

"Widely, deployed by leading organizations around the world, Platform LSF is recognized as the industry’s leading solution for workload management solution for compute and data intensive applications," said Chris Purpura, Vice President, Alliances and New Ventures, Platform Computing. "Through expanding an already strong relationship with IBM, we provide both Platform LSF and Blue Gene customers with an attractive proposition to leverage capacity to the fullest and yield increased benefits from their HPC infrastructure."

For information about Platform LSF’s integration on IBM Blue Gene please visit www.platform.com.

About Platform Computing

Platform Computing, the global leader in grid computing solutions, helps enterprises accelerate key business applications, reduce operational and capital costs, guarantee service levels and optimize their IT resources. Platform’s integrated desktop and enterprise grid software solutions are used by over 1,700 customers worldwide in the financial services, government, industrial manufacturing, electronics and life science industries to deliver higher quality products and services, improve business performance and maximize the return on IT investments. Founded in 1992, Platform has strategic relationships with Apple, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, SAS and SGI, and the Industry’s broadest application integration support. For more information visit www.platform.com.

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. For more information about IBM, visit www.ibm.com.

For more information:

Jon Carvill
Platform Computing
(905) 948-4208
jcarvill@platform.com