SC09 Wrap-up

Economic difficulties aside, the annual SuperComputing conference, now in its 22nd year, somehow defies the odds! SC09 in Portland, Oregon set an attendance record this year – roughly 10,000 attendees and 318 exhibitors hailing from 71 countries and all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. In addition to physical size, the SC conference continues to grow steadily in terms of market impact each year as well. SC09 was no exception. The conference featured some of the most interesting and innovative HPC scientific and technical breakthroughs from around the world.

 

For many of us working at Platform, the SC conference always has the familiar feel of a second home. The show formed the perfect backdrop for Platform Computing to showcase its new corporate brand identity. The new look and feel also gave a tangible boost to the level interest in the company's offerings and booth traffic from show attendees remained heavy throughout the event. No SC event can be complete without a party, and this year was no exception, our 5th Annual party was held at Rock Bottom Brewery, with over 600 attending and enjoying, great beer, food, prizes and live entertainment.

 

Just a few days before SC09, we announced the general availability of Platform ISF, our dynamic IT solution for enterprises to build and run their private clouds. Try it free for 30 days http://my.platform.com/public/eval-input.action. This is the solution Forrester Principal Analyst James Staten called: "the most complete internal cloud software solution we’ve seen so far.” Despite all the cloud hype, there's little doubt the market for building and managing private or internal clouds will grow to be quite large, eventually exceeding the market for HPC. Also announced was our new cluster management solution, Platform ISF Adaptive Cluster a product that dynamically changes the operating systems and personalities of compute nodes managed by Platform LSF through our new HPC portal, http://www.platform.com/private-cloud-computing/platform-isf-adaptive-cluster. And finally our industry-leading workload management solution for HPC environments Platform LSF 7 Update 6 is now available http://www.platform.com/grids/platform-lsf.

 

SC09 conference is all about high-performance computing -- and Platform Computing is the recognized leader in HPC management solutions. We were reminded of this fact at SC09 by our friends at Intel, who recognized Platform with an Intel Cluster Ready Pioneer Award. The name of the award is both a nod the Oregon Trail and SC09's return to Portland as well as formal recognition of Platform's early commitment to removing the risk and complexity out of buying HPC clusters. Thank you, Intel. We're honored to be a part of such a forward-thinking, customer-centric program as Intel Cluster Ready.