ACADEMIA

Univa Globus Enterprise Enables Organizations to Streamline Strategic Business Processes, Improving Collaboration and Reducing Time to Market for New Products -- Univa Corporation, the leading provider of open source Globus software, today announced general availability of Univa Globus Enterprise (UGE), an open standards based platform for deploying enterprise Grid solutions. "Univa's solutions target high-value business functions such as product design and innovation -- those functions where effective collaboration can drive significant improvements in time to market and revenues," said Univa CEO Mike Ellis. "By bridging the proprietary islands of technology scattered throughout the enterprise with an open platform, our customers can more effectively utilize information and resources for mission critical business processes." In industries such as high-tech electronics, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and automotive, critical product design and engineering processes depend on large amounts of data being available in conjunction with very specific computational environments. Until today, these environments were isolated from each other, forcing users to manually manage data and duplicate research and design work. The result: wasted effort that slows down time to market for new products, and a computing environment that is costly and difficult to manage. Univa Globus Enterprise was developed to address this complex problem. Univa's enterprise Grid solutions unify resources and data across the company to create a global, synchronized environment for applications such as engineered-product design, business intelligence, research and exploration. Increasing collaboration at these early stages of the product innovation process can dramatically reduce time to market for new products. "Univa Globus Enterprise provides an enterprise-ready, commercial, open standard environment for Grid solutions," said Ken King, IBM's Vice President of Grid Computing. "We are partnering with Univa to leverage UGE as a key Grid technology for our solutions and customer implementations that will drive real business value for our enterprise customers. IBM and Univa embarked on a strategic business relationship in 2005, and this is the first deliverable that enables our joint go-to-market initiatives." "We see the release of Univa Globus Enterprise as a major step forward in simplifying deployment, driving productivity and reducing costs associated with enterprise Grid solutions", said Satoshi Sekiguchi, director of Grid Technology Research Center, AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology), Japan. "Through delivery of robust, commercial product based on open standards, IBM and Univa are taking Grid to the next level of business value." AIST uses Globus software as the base for Ninf-G, a development environment that enables applications to run across an enterprise Grid. The release of Univa Globus Enterprise signals an important advancement for Grid computing technology as it makes the jump from its scientific roots into the Global 2000, building on the open source base that powers over 1,000 Grids around the world. The product comprises an enterprise-ready open source platform and value-added components that expedite deployment of enterprise Grid solutions. "In large enterprises, the need to ensure complete data availability and seamless collaboration across organizational entities is critical," said John Humphreys, research manager at IDC Enterprise Systems. "With UGE, Univa can deliver open standards based Grid solutions that leverage distributed technology resources in Global 2000 companies to provide faster time to value." Univa Globus Enterprise combines data management capabilities with access to distributed computing resources, creating solutions that span administrative domains and enable collaboration while maintaining the independence of each local environment. The product incorporates components for securely tracking and managing large, distributed data sets, accessing remote execution environments, discovering and monitoring resources on an enterprise Grid. Particular emphasis is placed on creating secure global environments without requiring wholesale replacement of existing security infrastructure. Univa Globus Enterprise supports Linux and Unix running on x86, and IBM pSeries, zSeries and BladeCenter hardware. Univa offers Univa Globus Enterprise on an annual subscription basis. It is available immediately in conjunction with the company's broad array of consulting services. For more information, go to its Web site.