Special Features:
GRID BUSINESS: AN INTERVIEW WITH
PREMAL KAZI
By Alan Beck, Editor-in-Chief
Premal Kazi is
the
Program Manager for Gateway Processing On Demand and is
responsible for driving the grid strategy for Gateway. Prior to joining
Gateway, Premal co-founded and led Business Development efforts for M7
Networks, a company delivering mobile hosting and connectivity services in the
U.K.
GRIDtoday: What specific factors led to Gateway's introduction of
Processing on Demand? How did you overcome the notion that you would be
stepping on the toes of Grid computing veterans like IBM and Sun?
Kazi: Gateway's decision to introduce Processing On Demand was driven by
three key factors:
A. Gateway runs a highly refined store network that houses close to 8,000
machines as part of its PC distribution model. These machines are primarily
used to demonstrate the latest computing technology available from Gateway. As
a result, these machines are kept up-to-date by constantly refreshing the
technology in these machines. However the processors on these machines are not
heavily taxed as the demo applications they run are not processor
intensive.
On a 24 hour basis, less than 5 percent of the available processing
capacity is utilized. Therefore, the collective processing capacity on our
store network exceeds 14 TFLOPS ranking it among the most powerful
supercomputers in the world. We realized that by aggregating this processing
capacity we could put together a reliable, high-capacity solution at a price
point that would be very attractive to a number of industries running
computationally intensive applications.
B. At the same time projects such as SETI@Home and Intel-United Devices
Cancer Project were getting a lot of attention and raised awareness of the
robustness and value of PC-based grids. United Devices currently runs the
largest public Internet grid in the world consisting of over 2.0 million
connected PCs and servers spread across over 200 countries. Although this
network runs over the Internet - a medium that is inherently insecure - they
have never had a security breach, and the network has been running
flawlessly.
These facts pointed to the viability of using United Dtevices proven grid
solution with Gateway's state-of-the-art PCs in a robust, controlled network
environment to offer a Processing-On-Demand Service.
C. Around the same time unprecedented advances were being made in the Life
Sciences industry. Use of large-scale computing power showed enormous promise
towards drastically improving the probability of developing new drugs.
However, the Life Sciences industry was and is facing reduced budgets in these
severely cash-scare times. As a result, drug discovery and research companies
have taken a very conservative approach towards spending capital on hardware
and software. Gateway's Processing On Demand service allows these companies to
reduce or eliminate capital spending through this alternative that is far more
operationally efficient.
At the same time, Gateway's Processing on Demand opens up possibilities for
unprecedented research to be conducted by companies of all sizes. Several
other industries such as Government, Geo Sciences, Financial Services,
Computational Fluid Dynamics, Applied-Mathematics, Theoretical Physics,
Thermodynamics, etc. also appeared to benefit tremendously from availability
of a low-cost, extremely-large source of computing power.
The convergence of these three factors led to the launch of Gateway
Processing On Demand, especially the fact that Gateway has significant
advantages and assets that can be leveraged to deliver a valuable service
immediately. The focus to this point has been on delivering a leading edge
service with power and costs previously unreachable and offering it to the
market today.
GRIDtoday: Whom did you foresee as the typical Processing on Demand
customers? How have these predictions worked out? How does Processing on
Demand stack up to its competition?
Kazi: A. I'll start by first answering the last question -- "How does
Processing on Demand compare to the competition?"
The service we can offer is unique in many ways. - We have the ability to
offer an extremely large processing capacity purely on-demand - without any
requirement for long-term usage or minimum-usage commitments. For example, a
customer can use our grid in January and then not use it until August, when
they have a real need without any obligations of continuous minimum use. In
addition, the PCs in our store network are constantly refreshed to the latest
technology available from Gateway thereby ensuring that the available capacity
on our grid keeps growing with time. This eliminates the issue of hardware
obsolescence that companies face when they purchase computing platforms.
The security available on our grid is robust and protects customer's
proprietary data through authentication, triple-DES encryption, firewalls,
intrusion detection systems and other standard corporate security mechanisms.
We are also in the process of rolling out Patented Gateway PC-security
technology to our store PCs which will add another layer of security to our
offering. The service is easy to use. Customers have a secure portal where
they can submit jobs and pickup results. No additional resources are required
to use this service.
Gateway Processing On Demand is true pay-per-use service, delivers
tremendous benefits, and is available today. The collective advantage of the
service's many features delivers a cost-benefit value that is difficult to
match.
B Our service is a valuable offering for companies of all sizes thanks to
the tremendous potential for cost-saving and because it is so easy to use.
Small to medium sized customers now have an alternative to buying in-house
hardware for running their computing-intensive applications. These companies
can now avoid traditional barriers to competition and pay exactly for what
they use. Large corporations, government organizations and research
institutions that have a discontinuous need for large processing capacities
can now get all the processing power they need exactly when they need it.
Some of our target industries include:
- Life Sciences companies including smaller Biotechs and large
Pharmaceuticals
- Geo Sciences companies running simulations to improve efficiency of their
mining and extraction operations
- Manufacturing Companies running Computational Fluid Dynamics
applications
- Financial institutions
- Research institution
- Government organizations
C. Our predictions that the above target markets would be most intersted in
Gateway Processing on Demand are coming to fruition. We have had inquiries
from a number of customers that are interested in porting their applications
onto our Grid. We are also working with leading application providers to make
their applications readily available on our Grid so that a large number of
customers familiar with these applications can run their jobs truly on-demand.
Our On-Demand Service enables traditional high-performance computing
application vendors to have an alternative delivery mechanism which can expand
their available market.
GRIDtoday: How are you marketing Processing on Demand to potential end-
users? How are such potential customers identified?
Kazi: We are developing specific marketing plans to promote our service
within the segments of interest. Applications providers are being brought on
board so customers in target segments can buy a complete solution on demand.
At the same time, we are leveraging Gateway's institutional and SMB sales
forces to get the word out to current Gateway customers.
Target customers are identified by their business profiles and industry
segments as well as there current use of high-performance computing hardware.
Customers of application providers we are partnering with will also become
target customers for Gateway Processing On Demand.
GRIDtoday: In Grid computation, there is often a significant difference
between pure processing costs and expenses incurred in setting up a problem or
function for processing. How does Gateway tackle this dichotomy? Will
Gateway's present approach be made more user-friendly or economical?
Kazi: For Gateway Processing On Demand, function setup involves porting the
applications onto Gateway's grid. This step is made simple by United Devices'
SDK and industry leading Application Framework. Customers can either use the
SDK to port the applications themselves or can purchase professional services
from United Devices if they want to outsource the task.
Because United Devices has invested significantly in making applications
quickly and easily, many applications can be enabled in a matter of a couple
of days. Once the application is ported, its repeat use is a matter of
submitting jobs over a secure, authentication-based web-portal. Also, as more
applications are made readily available via our ISV partners, the set up phase
for those applications will be largely eliminated.
GRIDtoday: What were the most significant technical challenges involved in
rolling out Processing on Demand? How long was the process?
Kazi: Since Gateway's store network was already refined and tested, it was
already prepared for the launch of service. However, Gateway put the grid
through an extensive testing phase by running a number of technical pilots in
which we evaluated the security, reliability, robustness, and non-
obtrusiveness of the United Devices Metaprocessor software.
We had to make sure that using the store network to offer processing on
demand services would not impact our normal store operations and that the
service could be delivered reliably to our customers. Since the results of
these pilots were all positive, we ran a pilot with Inpharmatica, a well-known
drug discovery company, who also tested the grid for security, reliability,
capacity and ease-of-use. When this pilot was also successful on all counts we
decided to launch the service. The entire testing phase took close to a year
to complete.
GRIDtoday: How will the market niche for Grid computing evolve over the
next year? The next decade? What will Gateway's role be in this process?
Kazi: In the next year, the standards efforts will continue to drive
convergence and thereby greater adoption of grid technologies. Awareness and,
more importantly, customer traction is on the rise as these capabilities move
into the mainstream. More applications, especially in the Product Lifecycle
arena will become grid enabled and companies will introduce unique business
models to help accelerate the adoption of grid technologies.
Over the next decade, grid technologies will have entered mainstream and
applications of all types including enterprise and consumer applications will
leverage grid technology. The use of computing power will be far more fluid
with customers and applications able to draw and pay for as much computing
power they need, exactly when they need it. Gateway will capitalize on its
unique market position and introduce other disruptive grid products and
services that will drive efficiencies that have traditionally been
unachievable.
Premal Kazi's Bio:
Premal Kazi is the Program Manager for Gateway Processing On Demand and is
responsible for driving the grid strategy for Gateway. Prior to joining
Gateway, Premal co-founded and led Business Development efforts for M7
Networks, a company delivering mobile hosting and connectivity services in the
UK.
He has also served as Senior Proposal Manager at Ericsson and Qualcomm
where he brought in $200M in new wireless infrastructure contracts. Premal
started his career with PCSI, a wireless data equipment company, where he
launched International Business Development efforts and made PCSI the market
leader in International shipments.
Premal has an MBA with concentration in Entrepreneurship from University of
Arizona and a Bachelors degree in Engineering from IIT Kharagpur.
|
