INDUSTRY

GridIron Software, a leading developer of grid computing solutions, today announced it has entered into an agreement with Microsoft Corp. to develop a grid computing solution. Microsoft and GridIron Software have been working together to make GridIron's grid computing technology available for HD real-time encoding solutions on Windows XP. GridIron provides the only commercial solution for distributed grid computing that is embedded directly into software applications. GridIron's grid computing solution provides powerful, fast, and efficient computing delivered at low cost. It can raise the efficiency of computing resources in an enterprise network from the typical 10 percent usage of desktops and 30 percent utilization of server capacity to the 80- to 90 percent range. Several small computers connected in this manner can collectively match or exceed the capability of a large, powerful and highly expensive supercomputer. "Grid computing provides significant benefit to desktop software application users," said Tim Harader, Senior Business Development Manager in the Windows Digital Media Division. "GridIron's technology promises to further extend productivity and performance for computationally intense applications like the encoding of high definition video." To date, the resources and expertise necessary to deploy commercial grid software has limited its use to high-performance computing and large enterprise markets. GridIron's unique application-embedded approach requires no special skills for end-users to deploy and yields tremendous benefit with as little as two computers, allowing the benefits of grid computing to be realized for the first time in non-traditional markets, such as digital content creation. "Our work with Microsoft is further endorsement of the tremendous benefits GridIron's grid computing solution brings to mainstream computer users working with desktop software applications," said Steve Forde, CEO of GridIron Software. "GridIron's technology is now supported by both Microsoft and Adobe, two of the world's most respected and successful desktop software application developers, to deliver substantial productivity benefits and workflow improvements to their customers." GridIron Software is working with leading industry partners such as Microsoft and Adobe Systems to deliver significant productivity and cost benefits of grid computing across workflows with substantial computing requirements, such as digital content creation. GridIron X-Factor uses grid computing technology to divide and distribute the work ordinarily performed on a single computer among several computers joined together in a network to achieve significant performance improvement. As a result, projects take less time to create, are less costly, and are more elaborate and realistic.