HPC Industry Analyst Firm Intersect360 Research Hires Dan Olds as Chief Research Officer

SUNNYVALE, CA—March 1, 2021— HPC, AI and hyperscale analyst firm Intersect360 Research has named Dan Olds its chief research officer, effective March 1.

A 25-year industry veteran, Olds comes to Intersect360 Research from OrionX, where he was a partner, analyst, and consultant for the HPC/AI market. Olds is a well-known figure in the HPC industry, having spent nearly two decades at the helm of Gabriel Consulting group. He also led teams at IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Cray and has been deeply involved with the Student Cluster Competition for the past decade.

“It’s rare to find someone who knows high-performance markets, who knows business strategy, and who knows how to use market research to drive real predictions,” said Intersect360 Research’s CEO Addison Snell. “Dan checks all those boxes, and more. He’s a terrific industry spokesperson, and he helps develop the future in his work with students.”

Snell went on to add, “With the changes brought about by COVID-19 this past year, our clients have relied even more heavily on our ability to accurately evaluate and predict the HPC, AI, and Hyperscale markets. The addition of Dan as Chief Research Officer gives us the ability to deliver even more of the in-depth insight our clients depend on to guide their strategic decision making.”

“I’m really excited to work with Addison and the rest of the Intersect360 team,” said Olds. “As an industry analyst, I’ve been admiring their reputation for generating highly reliable data and usable insights for their clients for more than a decade now. I’m really looking forward to furthering the mission to discover and interpret HPC/AI industry trends.”

Olds fills the position previously held by Chris Willard, Ph.D., one of the firm’s founders, who retired last year. “I’m honored to have been asked to join the company and follow in Chris’ footsteps. Those are some big shoes to fill. I’ll work hard to fit into them.”

In his first appearance in the new role, Olds will join Snell in presenting a webinar on Intersect360 Research’s latest analysis of HPC and AI Technology Trends Tuesday, March 2 at noon Eastern Time/11 am Central/10 am Mountain/9 am Pacific. He will present data and insights from the firm’s latest HPC Technology Survey, spanning trends across multiple industry dynamics, including: AMD vs. Intel market share, GPU adoption, cloud computing usage, interconnect shares, parallel file system penetration, and the ongoing market effects of COVID-19.

Registration for the free webinar is at http://www.intersect360.com/webinar.

An authority on technology trends and customer sentiment, Olds is a frequently quoted expert in industry and business publications such as The Wall Street JournalBloomberg NewsComputerworld, insideHPC and HPCwire.

In addition to server, storage, and network technologies, Dan closely follows the HPC, AI/ML, and Cloud, markets. He writes for a variety of publications, co-hosts the mildly popular Radio Free HPC podcast, and is the go-to person for the coverage and analysis of the supercomputing industry’s Student Cluster Challenge.

Dan brings to Intersect360 more than 25 years of experience in the high-end server market and as an industry analyst in the HPC/AI market.

Dan began his career at Sequent Computer, an early pioneer in highly scalable business systems. He was the inaugural lead for the successful server consolidation program at Sun Microsystems, and was at IBM in the strategically important mainframe and Power systems groups. He is a graduate of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with a focus on finance and marketing.

About Intersect360 Research
Intersect360 Research is a market intelligence, research, and consulting advisory practice focused on high-performance data center trends, including High Performance Computing (HPC), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, cloud computing, big data, and hyperscale. Intersect360 Research utilizes both user-based and supplier-based research to form a complete perspective of market dynamics, trends, and usage models, including both technical and business applications. The company’s end-user-focused research is inclusive from both a technology perspective and a usage standpoint, allowing Intersect360 Research to provide its clients with total market models that include both traditional and emerging HPC applications.

In addition to its market advisory subscription services, Intersect360 Research offers customers an array of client-specific services, including custom surveys, white papers and custom analysis. More information about Intersect360 Research as well as the full slate of Intersect360 Research reports available for purchase and download can be found at www.intersect360.com.