Comments on: Penguin launches on demand HPC utility

By: SGI launches on demand HPC computing | insideHPC.com

SGI launches on demand HPC computing | insideHPC.com — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:04:49 +0000

[...] today announced that they are joining the scrum with companies like Penguin (Penguin on Demand) and NewServers (we’ve talked about their “Bare Metal Cloud”) to offer a [...]

By: Penguin puts GPUs in on demand offering | insideHPC.com

Penguin puts GPUs in on demand offering | insideHPC.com — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:53:46 +0000

[...] up to speed on POD? More here.AKPC_IDS += "8856,"; Posted in Cloud HPC, Enterprise HPC, Events, GPUs, HPC Hardware, SC09 by [...]

By: John West

John West — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:49:45 +0000

@C — if you’re asking about @guest’s comment, I interpreted it as a reference to the various on demand HPC offerings that have been made before (Sun’s Network.com comes to mind, but there have been others) that haven’t been commercially viable. But I guess it’s really best for him/her to speak for themselves.

By: C

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:21:50 +0000

can you explain why it doesn’t work? Seems a broad statement

By: John West

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:39:32 +0000

Hey Fake John – long time no see. So I think I answered that question in the article; it was of interest to me as well. Penguin’s answer on COTS software is that if you have a license that allows you to run on equipment not on your “usual” site location, then they’ll work with you to get it installed and running and you’re good to go. You’d probably have to actually read the license to know that (ugh) or just email your software guy to get the answer. If your license doesn’t allow that, you’re out of luck since they are not (at this time) offering “rentable” licenses for any COTS as part of the solution — though they did say they’d be interested in doing that, it’s just that there aren’t many ISVs out there who have this built into their business model yet.

By: John

John — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:10:04 +0000

What commercial ISV code can be used – i.e. what is the largest Abaqus job I can run? How do they protect IP data? These articles need more meat peel back the onion!!

By: John West

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:33:23 +0000

@Guest – variants have been tried before and they haven’t worked, true. But, whatever bits of the technical offerings may have changed or stayed the same, the one thing that is definitely different is the environment in which Penguin’s offering (and the others) are being tried. The landscape has changed over the past several years, and there has been a lot of new customer awareness gained of the possibilities of hosted computing.

It does remain to be seen whether this awareness will combine with the particulars of Penguin’s offering to create a successful business, but the fact that previous attempts have failed doesn’t mean it’s is a bad idea to try it again now. The business environment is different, customer drivers are different, and there are new models springing up in other segments of the market.

By: guest

guest — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:38:11 +0000

This business model has been tried several times before and doesn’t work.