POWAY, Calif., -- Gateway, Inc. today unveiled its Gateway Processing On Demand(SM) service, a new offering for companies of all sizes requiring cost-effective on-demand access to a large source of computing power. The Gateway Processing On Demand service backed by the United Devices(TM) Alliance MetaProcessor(TM) platform is immediately available to deliver on-demand grid computing to organizations in a variety of industries, including life sciences, geosciences, nanosciences, entertainment, financial services and government. The alliance leverages the power of Gateway's nearly 8,000 high-performance PCs located in Gateway(R) stores across the nation and United Devices' vast experience with distributed computing software and services. It will provide improved ROI by enabling customers to reduce processing time for distributable applications, decrease or eliminate capital expenditure on high performance computing equipment, and align internal resources to their core business. The new offering gives smaller companies access to a large computing source that would be cost prohibitive to build in-house, and supplements internal resources for larger organizations. "Gateway is doing what we do best -- making cutting-edge technology available to mainstream customers, and making it easy to understand and take advantage of," said Bob Burnett, senior VP and chief technology officer, Gateway, Inc. "Increasingly, our business customers need access to serious computing power but can't always afford to purchase the hardware. With our Gateway Processing On Demand, they literally access the computing power only when they need it. This will save money and resources, helping them meet their business objectives more quickly and cost-effectively." Burnett added, "This is also a very strategic move. The Gateway Processing On Demand service is a great example of how Gateway is leveraging its fixed cost structure to utilize assets that were previously untapped." Customers will find the Gateway Processing On Demand service running United Devices' Alliance MetaProcessor platform simple and easy to use, requiring no additional investment in IT. Using a customer specific web services interface, the client can submit job requests, get real-time status updates, and pick up results when the job is complete. A recent pilot with Inpharmatica, a well-known drug discovery research firm, benchmarked the performance of the Gateway-United Devices distributed computing offering (running on 3,000 PCs) with the capabilities of an in-house dedicated computing cluster. Pat Leach, CIO of Inpharmatica, stated, "Computing on demand is something we have been seeking for some time, in order to fulfill unanticipated increases in demand. I see this capability as important in cost management and flexibility. The pilot was very successful across several criteria, including security, reliability, ease-of-use, speed and cost. We look forward to working with Gateway and United Devices to develop solutions for our high performance computing needs which underpin much of our drug discovery efforts." The on-demand grid can produce more than 14 TFLOPs (trillion floating point operations per second) at peak capacity, greater than the second fastest supercomputer in the world today as ranked by www.TOP500.org . Ahmar Abbas, managing director at Grid Technology Partners, commented, "The unleashing of this tremendous compute capacity, available to any company, at any time and in any slice will dramatically transform the way companies operate. Gateway's service not only empowers IT managers to provide their internal and external customers a level of service that was previously unimaginable but also liberates legions of engineers and scientists, from constantly scavenging for resources, to develop better products, faster and cheaper." According to Ed Hubbard, CEO of United Devices, "Our customers realize that on-demand computing allows them to better utilize readily available computing resources which will translate to significant improvements in computational speed and in the quality of results from high performance applications. They understand that our solutions and expertise can shorten the amount of time it takes to get products to market, and save money while doing it." Gateway and United Devices utilize advanced technology to provide a secure grid implementation. United Devices' Alliance MetaProcessor platform protects the network with data encryption, firewalls and intrusion prevention methods. Additionally, Gateway has patented technology that provides security at the PC level. Also, because Gateway is constantly refreshing its retail store PCs with the most current technology, the power of the grid increases over time, unlike purchased computing assets that depreciate and become obsolete in two years. The service is competitively priced based on processor-hours used to complete application runs and does not require any long-term or minimum-usage commitments.