INDUSTRY

TORONTO, CANADA -- Following an extensive competitive evaluation, Platform Computing Inc., the leader in distributed computing software solutions, announced that Bristol-Myers Squibb Company (NYSE: BMY) has selected Platform ActiveCluster(TM) to build one of the world's largest Enterprise Desktop Grids for Life Sciences research. Platform ActiveCluster will initially be implemented on several thousand desktops across research sites in the Northeast United States. Through this partnership, Bristol-Myers Squibb can harness its desktops and integrate its Linux servers to build a highly efficient, highly available, virtual computing infrastructure, ultimately reducing time to drug discovery. "This is a strategic partnership in which Platform's Grid computing expertise naturally complements Bristol-Myers Squibb's life sciences leadership," said Rene Copeland, vice president, sales, government and life sciences, Platform. "Both Platform and Bristol-Myers Squibb are serious about enterprise desktop computing for production use and understand the critical impact of technology on drug discovery. Through this partnership, we can help optimize the demand of users and applications with the most appropriate supply of resources wherever they exist in the enterprise infrastructure, while ensuring the highest availability of their distributed resource base." Although P2P startups generated market interest in early 2001, focus has shifted from Internet-based projects and desktop-only products to Enterprise Grid computing. Unlike P2P startup products, Platform ActiveCluster is designed for production use across heterogeneous clusters, as an integral part of Platform's comprehensive Enterprise Grid solution. ActiveCluster has been validated and tested with a wide variety of life sciences applications, including GenWise; Hidden Markov Models; SmithWaterman; Blast Suite FASTA; ClustalW; PAUP; Dock; Autodock; Think; GOLD; and Genoming, which do not require source code or programming changes. Bristol-Myers Squibb joins other life sciences organizations such as Princess Margaret Hospital, Entelos, Inc. and the France Telethon's `Decrypthon' project that have selected Platform ActiveCluster to harness idle desktop cycles and accelerate time to discovery. Princess Margaret Hospital is using ActiveCluster to improve collaboration between 1,500 scientists, technical staff, students and trainees to dramatically accelerate cancer research. Entelos is using ActiveCluster to enable its scientists to run faster simulations and accelerate PhysioLab, a predictive BioSimulation in silico (in computer) discovery and development solution. In addition, ActiveCluster linked 75,000 PCs across Europe for the France Telethon's `Decrypthon' project with Genomining to speed genetic research for muscular dystrophy. Beyond these examples, leading pharmaceutical firms around the world are integrating ActiveCluster with their compute-intensive applications for production deployment across the enterprise. Platform's solutions are used by 60 percent of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies, including AstraZeneca, BASF, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celera Genomics, Cereon Genomics, European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), Incyte Genomics, Merck, Monsanto, Pharmacia, and the Sanger Institute, to maximize the productivity and potential of their existing technology investments. Platform offers a comprehensive suite of distributed computing solutions for workload, performance and resource management. Platform's global professional services team provides industry domain experts, customer support, and training courses to ensure that organizations achieve maximum value.