IBM also announced today that it is responding to corporate client demand and will for the first time add significant UNIX-based capacity based on POWER5+ technology.

The expansion of compute power at DCCOD includes technology such as:

• IBM Blue Gene Architecture - the most powerful computing platform in the world today
• Intel and AMD-based IBM BladeCenter systems
• IBM System p5 POWER5+ systems

DCCOD centers currently enable customers to easily tap into massive supercomputing power to help meet critical short-term business needs, while also helping to avoiding large up-front capital outlays and long-term fixed IT costs.

"Innovative companies continue to turn to high performance computing to drive innovation through their enterprises or on behalf of their own customers," said David Gelardi, vice president of Deep Computing, IBM. "The flexibility of the DCCOD offering allows these companies to leverage vast computing resources and expertise while helping to conserve valuable floor space and reduce energy requirements - which may give them a competitive edge for short term or fluctuating needs for immense computing power."

DCCOD can help a broad spectrum of companies that have peaks and valleys in their need for supercomputing power. Commercial industries that have benefited from supercomputing power on demand are digital animation studios, bioinformatic research companies, financial services organizations, government agencies, petroleum, automotive, aerospace and national research laboratories that use high performance computing on an inconsistent basis.

Support Grows Among Corporate Clients and Solution Providers

Adding to a list of successful engagements through DCCOD, including Exa Corporation, QuamtumBio and others, Platform Computing and MSC Software have recently turned to DCCOD to test, market and/or deliver leading high performance computing applications to corporate clients.

"MSC.Software Corp is excited to be first to market with an on demand enterprise simulation solution in partnership with IBM," said Andy Meyer, vice president of corporate marketing at MSC. "When MD on Demand is combined with DCCOD and IBM System p5 POWER 5+ servers, customers will be able to unleash "MD on Demand's" full virtual simulation capabilities, deliver cost savings and flexibility demanded by customers through this innovative on demand delivery model."

"When Platform decided to do scalability testing with our next generation Symphony 3 software, we realized the need for a large, secure testing infrastructure. The obvious solution was the IBM Deep Computing Capacity on Demand (DCCOD) environment," said Jingwen Wang, Vice President of Products, Platform Computing. "Being able to access a High-Performance Computing IBM BladeCenter cluster of 500 nodes or more than 1000 CPUs when we needed it, not only met our technical needs, but made business sense as well. Furthermore, their operations team demonstrates deep skills and a strong commitment to helping us perform testing as efficiently as possible."

IBM Deep Computing Capacity on Demand can help enable customers to:

• Rapidly respond to their new and changing business opportunities
• Compete at a scale that may not previously been possible for them
• Easily tap into massive amounts of supercomputing power that could be otherwise unaffordable
• Rapidly deploy supercomputing capacity in response to urgent business opportunities
• Pay for supercomputing capacity on a variable cost basis, which may help avoid large up-front capital outlays and long term fixed IT cost commitments
• Lower overall supercomputing ownership and operating costs
• Take advantage of a scalable, highly secure and highly resilient on demand operating environment
• Improve price/performance for compute-intensive applications and processing of massive amounts of data
• Access a variety of technology to optimally serve the needs of diverse applications