Microsoft has claimed resellers should cash in on the lucrative deals up for grabs in the high performance computing (HPC) environment.
The software giant, which recently released a Windows Server designed for a clustered environment, is currently looking to expand its HPC reseller base. Microsoft has claimed the market has opened up to smaller firms that need HPC power.
In particular, markets such as retail, manufacturing, medical and finance industries are set to be prime HPC adopters in 2007, according to Michael Newberry, HPC product manager at Microsoft UK.
“Traditionally HPC was used by analysts or military establishments, but nowadays most customers need a faster way of doing business and creating spreadsheets. HPC enables every firm to have their own supercomputer,” Newberry told CRN.
“HPC also used to be limited to specialist operating systems, but now it is starting to migrate to Windows which means more people can use it,” he said.
Newberry added that Microsoft is looking for partners and system integrators to push HPC to new markets.
“We have been running VAR training days at our Reading offices and these have been over-subscribed. We are also being overwhelmed with software developers,” he said.
Julian Fielden, managing director of HPC reseller OCF, agreed.
“For the past five or six years HPC has been implemented on a Linux-based system, and the main issue with Linux is that it can be daunting to people that are unfamiliar with it,” he said. “We see the Microsoft cluster product as being incremental to the market, as opposed to being a substitution, because it gives people that already have a knowledge of the Windows system a chance to see the benefits that HPC can offer.”
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