GOVERNMENT

IBM today announced that seven leading application software developers, including Citrix, Cognos, and Engineous Software, have completed work with IBM to ready their applications for Grid computing. These companies are targeting what is expected to be a $12 billion Grid market opportunity by 2007. IBM's approach to Grid computing and its collaboration with the open community is attracting leading application vendors, including Abaqus, Actuate, Fluent and Sefas. Each has Grid-enabled their applications with the help of IBM's Solutions Grid for Business Partners initiative. By Grid-enabling their applications, these software providers can now support customers that already have or plan to deploy Grid technology to improve the efficiency, performance and integration of their IT assets. "The desire to optimize the utilization of computing power will continue to grow as companies strive for efficiency within IT," said Don Campbell, vice president of Product Innovation and Technology at Cognos. "IBM Grid computing continues IBM's history of IT innovation for business -- powering on demand business. Through this initiative, IBM and Cognos will not only make IT departments more efficient, but will assist enterprise organizations to become more effective with their performance management needs." "Citrix and IBM Grid computing are a natural fit since Citrix virtualizes the desktop on servers and provides an easy way to allocate resources as needed," said Chris Fleck, Managing Director, Strategic Alliances, Citrix Systems. "With the Citrix MetaFrame Access Suite, IBM Blade Center and Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator, customers can get all the benefits of virtualization and utility computing today. We have worked with IBM to test solutions that use Citrix to securely access, execute and retrieve information on demand from the Grid, regardless of device, bandwidth or location." IBM is offering business partners who register for the program at http://www.developer.ibm.com/spc/grid.html, a free, 90-minute technical consultation to help them better extend their software solutions to Grid-based environments. Business Partners will be assisted by one of four IBM Innovation Centers: Hursley in the United Kingdom; Waltham, Massachusetts; Chicago; and San Mateo, California. "IBM's Grid-enablement programs are a direct response to inquiries from dozens of leading independent software developers that have asked us how to capitalize on the growing momentum of Grid computing among commercial enterprises," said Stephen Gordon, Alliance Executive, IBM. "IBM is actively working to Grid-enable the applications of several dozen leading software providers by the end of year." Grid computing enables the virtualization of distributed computing and data resources, including processing, network bandwidth and storage capacity, to create a single system image. Just as an Internet user sees a unified view of content on the Web, a Grid user essentially sees a single, large computer. IBM has active Grid computing projects at leading commercial enterprises, including Charles Schwab, Hewitt Associates, Bowne & Company, and many others. IBM also is using Grid technology in its IBM eServer Benchmark Centers in Austin, Texas; Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; and Rochester, Minnesota. The centers help IBM customers more effectively test the performance of their applications before they go into production.