ARMONK, NY, January 27, 2003 - IBM is driving the benefits of Grid computing beyond its academic and research roots and into business enterprises with the introduction today of ten Grid offerings targeting key industries - aerospace, automotive, financial markets, government and life sciences.
Additionally, IBM 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 maximizing 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.
"We believe that Grid computing built and designed around open standards has the potential to greatly improve our quality of service and be a truly disruptive technology that can help us improve our business," said Oren Leiman, managing director of advanced technology at Charles Schwab.
IBM also announced today that it has established master relationship agreements with two Grid middleware 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 middleware 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," said Tom Hawk, general manager of Grid computing worldwide for IBM. "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 middleware."
From Minutes to Seconds
IBM and Charles Schwab's Advanced Technology Group took an existing application that ran on non-IBM systems and Grid-enabled it with the Globus Toolkit running RedHat Linux on IBM eServer xSeries 330 machines. The recently completed tests applied complex numerical methods in a dedicated environment to an existing wealth management application. This Grid-enablement reduced the processing time on the application from more than four minutes to 15 seconds. If implemented, this could allow Charles Schwab to increase customer satisfaction by responding to inquiries at a faster pace.
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 Optimization, and Government Development.
Based on these focus areas, IBM is introducing ten Grid offerings for the following markets:
- Financial Markets (Business Analytics and Enterprise Optimization Focus)
- For Financial Services customers, IBM is offering two Grid options: an Analytics Acceleration Grid and an IT Optimization Grid. The Analytics Acceleration Grid can help 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 Optimization Grid is designed to help customers exploit available, underutilized compute and storage resources. IBM's work with Charles Schwab, announced today, is one example of an Analytics Acceleration Grid.
- 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 maximize 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 can help companies in these industries to manage their costs by optimizing the use of their investment in existing infrastructure. The Design Collaboration Grid is designed to enable data sharing and distributed work flow across partners, which will enable faster design processes.
- Governments (Government Development Focus) -- For Government agencies, IBM is offering an Information Access Grid that can help maximize 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. Customized to each organization, the workshops are designed to help companies examine how Grid technologies can impact their organization.
The Grid offerings announced today 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 ISV Business Partners
IBM today announced that it is working with five select Grid middleware companies to deploy Grid solutions in the selected industries that IBM is targeting. Two of the vendors - Platform Computing and DataSynapse -- have signed master relationship agreements with the company.
Platform Computing is a 10-year-old company that generates more than $50 million a year delivering Grid solutions to 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.
IBM also has agreements with three other Grid middleware vendors -- Avaki, Entropia and United Devices ? and will engage with these vendors in industries where they offer the greatest expertise.
Customer Testimonials
"Grid computing has already had a significant impact on our ability to meet our business objectives," said Bridget-Anne Hampden, managing director and CIO of Corporate and Investment Banking, Wachovia Corporation. "The combination of IBM's infrastructure expertise and DataSynapse's ability to enable a wide range of applications creates a compelling solution with immediately realizable benefits. As a long-time customer of both IBM and DataSynapse, we are excited about the partnership between the two companies "
"PDVSA, the 6th largest Oil Company in the world, is in the process of implementing Grid technology from IBM and Platform Computing to improve its oil reservoir simulation modeling applications providing faster performance and more accurate forecasting. Working with IBM to quantify the significant business benefits, PDVSA is extremely excited about this new technology and its application potential across its enterprise," said Emilio Augustin, PDVSA Technical Operations Manager.
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's Grid computing business, visit www.ibm.com/grid.
Voor meer informatie
Etta Pouw
IBM Nederland N.V.
Communications
Johan Huizingalaan 761
1066 VH Amsterdam
Tel: 020 513 4228
Fax: 020 617 7600
etta_pouw@nl.ibm.com