Today Microsoft announced it has acquired Cycle Computing, a software company focused on making cloud computing resources more readily available for HPC workloads.
When Rachel, Rob, Doug, and I started Cycle twelve years ago on an $8,000 credit card bill, customers needed large up-front investments to access Big Compute,” writes Cycle Computing CEO Jason Stowe in his blog. “We set out to fix that, to accelerate the pace of innovation by changing the way the world accesses computing. Since then, our products have helped customers fight cancer & other diseases, design faster rockets, build better hard drives, create better solar panels, and manage risk for peoples’ retirements.
According to Microsoft’s Jason Zander, Big Computing up until now has been accessible only to the most well-funded organizations. “At Microsoft, we believe that access to Big Computing capabilities in the cloud has the power to transform many businesses and will be at the forefront of breakthrough experimentation and innovation in the decades to come. Thus far, we have made significant investments across our infrastructure, services and partner ecosystem to realize this vision.”
We’ve already seen explosive growth on Azure in the areas of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and deep learning,” writes Zander. “As customers continue to look for faster, more efficient ways to run their workloads, Cycle Computing’s depth and expertise around massively scalable applications make them a great fit to join our Microsoft team. Their technology will further enhance our support of Linux HPC workloads and make it easier to extend on-premise workloads to the cloud.”
Now supporting InfiniBand and accelerated GPU computing, Microsoft Azure looks to be a perfect home for Cycle Computing, which started its journey with software for aggregating compute resources at AWS. The company later added similar capabilities for Azure and Google Cloud.
Azure has a massive global footprint and, more than any other major cloud provider. It also has powerful infrastructure, InfiniBand support for fast networking and state-of-the-art GPU capabilities. Combining the most specialized Big Compute infrastructure available in the public cloud with Cycle Computing’s technology and years of experience with the world’s largest supercomputers, we open up many new possibilities. Most importantly, Cycle Computing will help customers accelerate their movement to the cloud, and make it easy to take advantage of the most performant and compliant infrastructure available in the public cloud today.
Jason Stowe, CEO, Cycle Computing
Jason Stowe concurs. “Now, we see amazing opportunities in joining forces with Microsoft. Its global cloud footprint and unique hybrid offering is built with enterprises in mind, and its Big Compute/HPC team has already delivered pivotal technologies such as InfiniBand and next generation GPUs. The Cycle team can’t wait to combine CycleCloud’s technology for managing Linux and Windows compute & data workloads, with Microsoft Azure’s Big Compute infrastructure roadmap and global market reach.
In short, we’re psyched to be joining the Azure team precisely because they share our vision of bringing Big Compute to the world: to solve our customers’, and frequently humanity’s most challenging problems through the use of cloud HPC.
