ECONOMICS

Altair Engineering, a global leader in product design consulting, engineering software and high-performance computing technology, reaffirmed it's commitment to support the advancement of academic research by announcing a comprehensive Academic Grant program for their cutting edge PBS Pro(tm) grid technology. The program is focused on providing Altair's Portable Batch System software, PBS Pro(tm), to academic institutions through individual grants. "Altair understands the important contributions academic institutions have made towards the advancement of Grid technologies and we want to encourage the continuous innovation and use of PBS Pro within this important sector" said Michael Humphrey, vice president of Enterprise Computing, Altair. "We have successfully upgraded hundreds of Academic institutions from OpenPBS to PBS Pro with this program. These customers benefit from the increased reliability, productivity and functionality of PBS Pro and also reduce their total cost of operating their computational facilities." Altair's Academic Grant program was designed to increase interaction between educational organizations and their local Altair field office which will lead to higher levels of support and greater efficiencies in the utilization of their existing computational resources. Altair has an established worldwide support organization which can greatly increase the adoption and effectiveness of PBS Pro within an organization. Customers in different regions of the world have different expectations relative to software support and the Altair Academic Grant program adapts to these different expectations. The Altair Academic grant program is tailored to conform with local customs and cultures around the world. Qualified Academic institutions in North America who apply for a PBS Pro academic grant are offered two options: Acquire annual leases of PBS Pro without a support agreement at no cost or acquire annual leases of PBS Pro with standard commercial support for the cost a commercial customer would pay for just the support component. In counties where it is customary to include software support and installation services with all software offerings the Altair Academic program offers different acquisition options. Existing academia customers and prospective educational organizations interested in learning more information about the PBS Pro Academic grant program are encouraged to visit the www.altair.com/pbspro/academia website to apply for an educational grant.