Digipede Technologies has unveiled what the company claims is the first commercial distributed computing solution based entirely on Microsoft .NET.
Digipede claims its Digipede Network “radically improves the performance of real-world business applications and is easier to buy, install and use than other solutions.”
“The Digipede Network … enables a new user to go from purchase to improved productivity in less than an hour,” said Digipede CEO John Powers.
The Digipede Network is a packaged software solution that lets companies or departments combine the computing power of their Windows-based computers and servers to improve the speed and scalability of applications without the need for additional hardware investments.
The product comes in two editions: Team Edition, for smaller companies or departments, and Professional Edition for enterprise-level deployments.
The Digipede Network parcels out complex computing jobs across a network by dynamically allocating the computing power of both dedicated and idle resources. The product requires no custom configuration or on-site implementation help, Digipede said.
The Digipede Network consists of Digipede Agents, which manage the individual desktops, servers or cluster nodes and the tasks that run on them; the Digipede Server, which manages the workflow throughout the system; and the Digipede Workbench, through which users can define and run jobs.
Each Agent gathers information about the computer on which it runs, including hardware, software, and data resources available locally, then chooses the best work for that computer.
Beta testing of the product is currently underway. Companies interested in beta-testing Digipede Team Edition can register for the beta program at www.digipede.net. Commercial release is planned for the second quarter. Pricing for the Team Edition starts at $995 for a system licensing one Digipede Server and five Agents. Additional Agents can be licensed for $199 each.
IBM Introduces Accelerated Design Services for Grid Computing
IBM unveiled a new offering from IBM Global Services designed to help enterprise clients implement more productive grid solutions.
Developed by the IBM Grid Integration Center in Austin, Tex., the Grid Accelerated Design Services helps clients build grid solutions faster and more efficiently based on the experiences and results of other clients that have successfully deployed grid solutions.
“This offering brings together IBM’s expertise in designing and delivering grid solutions across vertical markets,” said Ken King, vice president of IBM Grid computing. “Grid Accelerated Design Services highlights one of the benefits of the Grid Integration Center, which is to pass along the experiences and knowledge that IBM’s services team brings to IBM clients so they can achieve business value from grid computing more rapidly.”
The new offering supports multiple applications in a heterogeneous environment integrating grid middleware packages, workload virtualization, storage virtualization, orchestration and provisioning, and license management. The offering can also help define and enforce policies and priorities to control resource sharing across organizations.
Big Blue also unveiled grid application enablement and deployment services, and the “Grid Value At Work Tool,” which uses industry templates to examine multiple grid and non-grid scenarios prior to implementation to predict application performance and return on investment.
United Devices Unveils Capacity Management and Unified Job Scheduling
United Devices announced two new offerings for enterprise infrastructure management: Capacity Management and Unified Job Scheduling. The solutions were engineered based on feedback from more than 60 customer deployments of United Devices’ Grid MP platform.
The Capacity Management solution lets companies analyze current IT capacity and utilization to make more informed purchasing and capacity planning decisions, and the Unified Job Scheduling solution lets IT organizations make an easier ‘evolutionary’ migration to an actively managed grid environment.
