Darkstrand and NCSA Announce Collaborative Alliance

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Darkstrand has announced that they have formed a collaborative alliance with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications [NCSA] at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  The alliance weds the technical capabilities and existing partnerships of NCSA and the long-distance network access and project management skills of Darkstrand.  According to the release, NCSA’s Private Sector Program [PSP] currently garners partnerships from one third of all FORTUNE 50 companies.

NCSA aligns with industry leaders to tackle the HPC and IT challenges that impede fast product development. For more than two decades, NCSA has worked with global corporations to solve intractable problems in HPC, data management and analysis, visualization, cybersecurity and advanced IT.  We believe that forward-thinking companies can benefit from our partnership with Darkstrand to lead the coming innovation revolution,” said Merle Giles, director of the NCSA Private Sector Program.

NCSA is also hosting the upcoming National Science Foundation Blue Waters machine.  With this partnership, the sustained multi-petaflop machine will now be available [part time of course] to a host of researchers accessing the resource via the Darkstrand high bandwidth network.

Darkstrand is in the business of enabling companies to accomplish things they have been unable to do before,” said Michael Stein, CEO, Darkstrand. “We ask corporations, ‘What would you do if bandwidth was never a constraint?” in order to liberate their ideas.  Partnering with leaders such as NCSA’s PSP, which understands the need to close the gap between high-end research and corporate America, is a critical advantage for our customers.  Through the PSP, corporations have the HPC technologies and deep expertise they need to innovate, prototype and quickly introduce new products into the marketplace.”

This partnership could prove very interesting for Darkstrand.  Given the recent rumblings from the White House regarding a complete overhaul of our current broadband infrastructure and the hefty list of sealed partners/participants, they could very well be on their way to serious national stardom.