Platform Computing Customer Harvard Medical School Receives 2009 InfoWorld 100 Award for Internal Cloud Computing Project

TORONTO, Jan. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Platform Computing, the leader in cluster, grid and cloud management software, today announced that its customer Harvard Medical School (HMS), a leading medical university and research facility, received an InfoWorld 100 Award for deploying one of top 100 information technology (IT) projects in 2009, as determined by InfoWorld editors. Each year, International Data Group's InfoWorld 100 Awards recognize the 100 most innovative IT initiatives used to further an organization's business goals and acknowledge the achievements of top IT projects that exemplify inventive, forward-thinking technology use that meets both business and technical objectives.

Harvard Medical School has more than 7,500 full-time faculty working in 11 academic departments located at the school's Boston campus or in one of 47 hospital-based clinical departments at 17 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes around the world. To ensure that computing resources are always available to researchers and faculty, HMS built an internal cloud based on Platform products, IBM hardware, Isilon and EMC storage solutions, along with various biomedical software solutions such as MatLab and SAS. Harvard Medical School's move from a centralized IT services organization to a highly-scalable, cost-effective, self-service solution required a cultural shift among research lab directors to overcome the initial skepticism around resource assurance and allocation on a shared infrastructure. However, once the project was implemented, scientists soon noticed that the internal grid, which serves as the backbone for HMS's internal cloud, offers a great deal of flexibility and reliability. The new infrastructure offers both scalability and workload distribution, creating a system of shared computing resources that can process large, complex calculations in a fraction of time that a single computer would take.  

"High performance computing is the heart of scientific discovery, which is why we needed a cutting-edge internal compute cloud to ensure resources are always available for our researchers around the world," said Marcos Athanasoulis, Director of IT, HMS. "The internal grid allows our researchers to collaborate more easily than ever before and focus their attention on medical research instead of IT management."

"Leading research institutes such as Harvard Medical School are using forward-looking computing initiatives such as cloud computing to maintain their competitive edge and leadership position to further medical breakthroughs," said Randy Clark, Chief Marketing Officer, Platform Computing. "We are pleased to see that Harvard Medical School, like many of Platform's customers in the scientific community, is benefiting from the ability to provide researchers resources that are dynamically and efficiently matched with available processing supplies on demand."

"This year's recipients of InfoWorld's highest honor are shining examples of IT projects undertaken by tech leaders committed to pushing their organizations forward," said Jason Snyder, Features Editor, InfoWorld.

About InfoWorld 100 Awards

Companies around the world rely on technology to enable and enhance their business operations and deliver on their business strategies. The InfoWorld 100 Awards recognize each year the 100 most innovative uses of IT initiatives to further business goals.

About Platform Computing

Platform Computing is the leader in cluster, grid and cloud management software - serving more than 2,000 of the world's most demanding organizations. For 17 years, our workload and resource management solutions have delivered IT responsiveness and lower costs for enterprise and HPC applications. Platform has strategic relationships with Cray, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Red Hat, and SAS. Visit www.platform.com.

SOURCE Platform Computing

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