IBM pitches supercomputing to go

Want supercomputing power without buying and running a supercomputer? Ask IBM. Big Blue is offering customers access to IBM-managed supercomputer clusters as part of its corporate e-business on-demand initiative.

The idea is that customers will pay for processing power on an as-needed basis, depending on capacity and duration of use.

The service is aimed at industries such as energy, life sciences and entertainment that require large-scale computing power, often only in short bursts. The data processing division of Petroleum Geo-Services will be the first company to try out IBM's supercomputer on-demand. It is using the services for a computationally intensive seismic-imaging project in the Gulf of Mexico. To support its new on-demand services, IBM is building a grid of Unix servers running IBM's Power4 processors and a Linux cluster of rack servers based on Intel's Xeon processors. The first IBM supercomputing hosting facility will be in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

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Want supercomputing power without buying and running a supercomputer? Ask IBM. Big Blue is offering customers access to IBM-managed supercomputer clusters as part of its corporate e-business on-demand initiative.

The idea is that customers will pay for processing power on an as-needed basis, depending on capacity and duration of use.

The service is aimed at industries such as energy, life sciences and entertainment that require large-scale computing power, often only in short bursts. The data processing division of Petroleum Geo-Services will be the first company to try out IBM's supercomputer on-demand. It is using the services for a computationally intensive seismic-imaging project in the Gulf of Mexico. To support its new on-demand services, IBM is building a grid of Unix servers running IBM's Power4 processors and a Linux cluster of rack servers based on Intel's Xeon processors. The first IBM supercomputing hosting facility will be in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

IBM is transferring Al Zollar, general manager of its Lotus division for the past three years, to head its iSeries server group. Ambuj Goyal, currently general manager of solutions and strategy for the software group, now will head Lotus. No date has been set for the move, nor was any reason offered other than that it is IBM practice to regularly move executives to new positions. Zollar took over for Jeffrey Papows upon his arrival at Lotus and held the positions of CEO and president of what then was Lotus Development. Soon after Zollar took the helm, though, speculation started that IBM was going to fully absorb Lotus, which it acquired in 1995 and allowed largely to run on its own. Eventually, Zollar's title was changed to general manager, and IBM officially, if quietly, announced that Lotus was being run as a software division of IBM.

The Strategic Sourcing Advisory Council (SSAC, formerly MSP Association) recently decided to cease operations. The industry group emerged in 1999 to develop standards for outsourced management services and grew to include more than 100 high-tech software and services companies. SSAC Executive Director Carolyn Holden detailed in a letter how economic distractions at member companies took resources away from the SSAC's work. A consulting group, the MSP Alliance, pledged shortly after the SSAC announcement to continue with its work in outsourced management education. In 2000, the managed service provider market reached $172 million, and at that time, IDC projected the market would grow to $1.1 billion by 2005. Audrey Rasmussen, an analyst at Enterprise Management Associates, says forecasters assumed the MSP market "was a new paradigm that would take over a majority of IT management, when the more reasonable assumption was that it would be used selectively and as a supplement to IT."

The board of directors of Network-1 Security Solutions last week fired the company's president and CEO Richard Kosinski and CFO Murray Fish after each filed lawsuits against Network-1 seeking compensation and bonuses worth about $400,000, according to sources on the board. Network-1, which recently announced it would no longer sell its CyberwallPlus firewall product line, named an independent financial consultant, Edward James, as interim CEO and CFO. Network-1, which says it has sufficient funds to stay open through 2003 with a staff of fewer than a dozen employees, is actively seeking a merger partner.