Powers Unfiltered

OK, if you’re reading about distributed computing, you’re probably already reading Serial to Parallel to Distributed by Marc Jacobs, but if you’re not, it’s time to start.  Marc is a former Digipede client (at a big secretive asset manager) who has since moved on to the elite financial technology consulting firm Lab49. 

Marc writes insightfully on a variety of issues related to grid and high-performance computing, and he’s recently finished his best and most comprehensive series to date.  It’s a seven-part series of posts based on a speech he gave on the state of high-performance computing in finance, at a Microsoft HPC event in New York earlier this year. 

I was fortunate to be at the HPC event, to attend Marc’s presentation, and to watch as the attendees learned a lot about the real needs of customers in this market.  Read, and see what I mean:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five
• Part Six
• Part Seven

I will not attribute causality, but I will note that in the six months since Marc gave this presentation, Digipede sales are up more than 600% over sales in the year-earlier period, and that the majority of that increase is in financial services. 

Yes, that’s the Digipede flag on top of Mt. Rainier.  OK, NEAR the top.  Read on.

Our friend Terry Clancy from Microsoft’s VSIP team took part in a fundraiser to help repair the damage from this winter’s floods in Washington.  We were one of the sponsors of Terry’s climb, and he was kind enough to carry our flag up there and send us this picture.

(His group climbed near the summit, but their experienced guide turned them back due to avalanche danger.) 

Apparently, their group raised more than $40,000 for the Washington State National Park Fund — great job, Terry!

Digipede is growing again. While not yet the size of some grid competitors, we’ve hit a very interesting inflection point this year. There are many clear signs, but I’ll talk about one that may not be visible — except from my desk.

At my desk, the phone is ringing and my email box overfloweth — with consultants and systems integrators. A couple of years ago, when we launched the Digipede Network, I could not get a call back from an SI or IT consultant larger than two guys and a dog. Now, everybody from high-end boutique consultants to the world’s largest SIs are calling — for all the right reasons. They’ve got a customer. They want training. They need more technical details for a project they’re specifying. They need help responding to an RFP. They want, suddenly and very urgently, to be providing grid solutions that are radically easier to buy, install, learn, and use than competing offerings.

This sudden popularity comes from a at just the right time for us.  We’re adding staff (recruiters, please don’t call me — how often does cold calling actually work for you? It won’t work here…), but we’ve said from the beginning we don’t want to build a big staff for its own sake. We don’t want to be in the consulting business — I often refer to myself as a recovering consultant, and I someday hope to declare myself cured — and I’d much rather work with motivated SIs and consultants who WANT to build a great grid consulting practice.

How does the Digipede Network qualify as the most SI-friendly grid offering around? Well, let me count the ways. Price. Platform. Performance. Reliability. Security. APIs. Manageability. Support. Documentation. In other words — the same things that appeal to our rapidly growing customer base. That’s because good SIs want happy customers and painless implementations just like the rest of us. More importantly, they know that a successful grid project almost always leads to additional high-value projects with the same client. (This is in marked contrast to not-so-good SIs and consultants, who seem to want to milk a single grid engagement for every hour of consulting they can get — those guys can call our competitors, whose needless complexity often makes a great fit for greedy consultants.) 

My dance card at the upcoming Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver is rapidly filling up with more of the same — which is fine with me.   The market for the world’s only .NET-based grid computing solution is large and growing rapidly, and we have no interest in becoming expert in every vertical market or horizontal application to which we can sell our product. 

So meet me there, or call me here — we’re a partner-friendly organization, and we’re expanding our role in the Microsoft partner ecosystem.

 

I will post another million positive things about the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (WWPC) any day now.  Promise.  I love this event.  Honest.  But for now — arrrg.  Microsoft’s use of its own tools is driving me nuts.  Here we go again. 

As many of you know, I’m a big fan of large conferences, under certain circumstances.  But as I’ve posted before, the investment in money and time and travel-based pain is only worth it for Digipede if we put in some time and effort up front, and commit corresponding time and effort to following up.  (See the now-classic “work it or it’s not worth it,” posted one year ago today.)

So here I am, working it.  I’m in Microsoft’s WWPC Web site, trying to build my schedule.  A meaningful day at this event is composed of four things:
– Attending sessions (presentations, labs, break-out sessions)
– Having meetings scheduled through WPC Connect (formerly called “structured networking,” basically a way to schedule meetings at a set of tables with other attendees, etc.)
– Having meetings NOT scheduled through WPC Connect (perhaps elsewhere in Denver, perhaps with people not registered for the conference, perhaps with attendees who I already know have not bothered to sign up for WPC Connect)
– Visiting other partners in their booths on the exhibit floor, or at least reserving time to check out those booths.

And Microsoft has provided me with various tools for arranging my schedule — a searchable course catalog, tools for finding people to meet with, and more.  Of course, for many years, it has been possible to build a Web site that allows one to manage a calendar.  Also, for those managing their calendar in Outlook instead, it has long been possible to create online the calendar item and download it to your Outlook calendar. 

And for many years, Outlook has known all it needs to know about time zones. 

Best practice for a Web site that makes Outlook calendar items, as far as I know, is for the Web application to include in any calendar item it creates information about the time zone in which the meeting takes place, so that when you download that item, your Outlook (which knows your own time zone) can make the appropriate adjustment and put it into your calendar accordingly.  Then, when you travel to Denver (for example), you tell Windows “hey, I’m on Mountain time now,” and voila, everything works.

Second-best practice, equally common in my experience, is for the Web application to include NO time zone information in any calendar item it creates, to assume the user never re-sets his or her time zone when traveling, so that the calendar item stays in the same time in Outlook regardless of where the user is.  Then, when you travel to Denver, you do nothing, and voila, everything works, pretty much (ok, the clock on your computer is not on local time when you’re in Denver, but when you look at your calendar your appointments match what local clocks say). 

Ninety-third best practice is to use best practice for Sessions, and second-best practice for WPC Connect. 

Yup.  That’s right.  Try it.  Sitting here on Pacific time, when I save a 2:00 PM WPC Connect meeting to my Outlook calendar, it lands at 2:00 PM.  When I save a 2:00 PM conference Session to my Outlook calendar, it lands at 1:00 PM.  And when I want to schedule a bit of my own time (for a non-WPC Connect meeting, or for time on the Exhibit floor), I just…umm…I just….what?

Now I am nobody’s idea of the brightest Outlook power user out there.  I’m probably about average for a Microsoft WWPC attendee, and somewhat above average for the general Outlook-using public.  And even I know that the fix is to just decide for myself what system I will use, and (manually) adjust the time of the “other” system accordingly.  So this is hardly a “critical bug,” since it has an easy workaround.  And yeah, I realize that different groups inside and outside of Microsoft are involved in these two pieces of functionality.  But why should I, Joe Partner, have to know that, and why should I care?  Presumably, people with vastly more Outlook experience than I (e.g., many many Microsoft employees who will be attending the WWPC) have already had this delightful experience.  How can this NOT have been one of the first use cases they tested?? 

Oh — and let me add that this is only a problem (and workaround) when the process of downloading calendar items works at all.  Often (half the time maybe?) Outlook just gives me an error that says “Cannot import vCalendar file.”  The workaround for this is – do it all by hand.  (Yes, this really only happens sometimes, some Sessions work fine, others don’t.  And yes, there are numerous references online to this same error, going back years.  Grrrrrrr.)

OK, enough ranting; back to the clunky process of preparing for a great show.

OK, Digipede might no longer properly be called a startup. It’s been two years (next week) since the release of the Digipede Network, and we’ve got more customers and revenue and growth than a true startup — but we still think and act like a startup. In particular, when it comes to travel — we’re cheap.

Oh, we love to travel — I’ve always been a big advocate of getting in front of customers and prospects as often as possible. But it’s far better to make two trips than one on the same budget.

Which brings us to the New York problem. If you travel to New York, you know — some cities are expensive, and then there’s New York. A very, very ordinary hotel room that might cost under $100 in another town can easily cost $300 in New York – and far more if you don’t book WAY in advance. And often I don’t. Yet some of you see me in New York quite often these days.

So what’s the secret? Priceline? Hotwire? Nope. Those work great in some cities, but in New York, when the supply of rooms gets tight (i.e., almost always), these don’t save that much and you can end up in some highly dubious rooms.

No, the secret is the Pod. The Pod Hotel (formerly called the Pickwick Arms hotel) requires some attitude adjustment (unless you think like a startup!). Basically, if your college dorm had the same advertising agency as Apple, it would be the Pod Hotel.

The rooms are quite small, the beds are small (OK, they’re twins, but I’m 6’4″), you don’t get your own bathroom (there are four per floor), and there’s no room service (but come on — you’re in midtown Manhattan! Go out!). But the whole place is newly refurnished, very clean, comfortable, equipped with a nice little flatscreen TV plus a clock radio with a dock for your iPod, conveniently located in Midtown (on 51st Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues) — and even if you book just a few days ahead, it’s $129 or less per night, including free wireless internet access.

The startup mentality says hotel rooms are for sleeping in — the rest of the day is too valuable to spend in the room anyway — so if you can give up a bit of space and luxury, you can save a bunch of money for the next trip.   Now you  know.

After a little extra travel drama (sitting the standard three hours on the runway at JFK), I’m back in Oakland.  SIFMA was interesting, productive, and exhausting, as usual. 

Thanks to our friends at HP, our decision not to have our own booth at SIFMA worked out great.  We camped in the front corner of their booth for three days — vastly more productive real estate than any independent small booth would have been for us. 

And thanks to our friends at Microsoft, we had plenty of other customer-facing opportunities away from the show floor (their two receptions in their super-crowded 4th-floor suite had acceptable drinks, mediocre food, and really, really good content — exactly the right combination to bring in the right audience!). 

Things I saw that were interesting:

• HP blades.  I know, I mostly write about software, and if you’re not into hardware, skip ahead.  But I have to say — running our software on the HP cluster in their booth was just a pleasure.  Yes, they use the same Intel and/or AMD chips everybody is using, but that’s where the similarity ends.  HP continues to extend its lead in manageability, convenience, cooling, and more.  We were running demonstrations of the Digipede Network on six dual-core, dual-processor C-class blades with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition (CCE), and the results were impressive.  Even a small system like this (a “grid-in-a-box” configuration) can provide order-of-magnitude increases in application performance for many computational finance applications.  And the real beauty of this setup is how simple it is to expand once you get started — plug in more hardware, and expand your grid.  Link it to your existing desktops and servers throughout your business, and expand your grid further.  All just as smooth and slick as you please.  You will not find a simpler or smoother introduction to the grid experience than an HP cluster running CCE and the Digipede Network Professional Edition.  Period. 
• The Microsoft / GigaSpaces demonstration of a high-volume market data application.  It looked slick, and showed off low-latency functionality from our friends at GigaSpaces.  Quite cool — and another indication of Stevan Vidich’s impressive breadth of expertise in creating important solutions using technology from Microsoft and its partners.  The Microsoft partner ecosystem is among Microsoft’s most valuable assets — but an underappreciated asset among many at Microsoft.  Kudos to Stevan for continuing to show the way!
• The Microsoft / Linedata / Lab49 demonstration of a trading application for buy-side customers.  While the underlying functionality was interesting, the presentation layer stole the show.  New apps that really take advantage of Windows Presentation Foundation are going to make a real impact faster than most people realize — and will drive a lot of business for Microsoft and its partners.  In financial services, our friends at Lab49 provide a rare combination of top-notch development expertise and deep domain expertise — and that combination showed through in this demonstration.  Great job, guys.

And the other thing I saw that was interesting was — customers.  While many vendors complained that this year had few real customer prospects, that was not our experience.  We saw customers from small hedge funds to big investment banks that were interested in scheduling follow-up appointments immediately.  Financial services remains the hottest market for grid computing, and it’s moving our way.  So now I’m off to follow up on a thick stack of business cards from prospective customers, partners, and more.  See you all there next year.

 

Next week, Nathan Trueblood and I will be at the Conference Formerly Known as SIA TMC — It’s the Securities Industry and Finanical Markets Association Technology Management Conference, or SIFMA TMC.  Last year I described this event as follows:

If you have not been to this event, it is unlike any other trade show I’ve ever attended. Located entirely within the New York Hilton at 1335 Avenue of the Americas (between 53rd and 54th Streets), there are 7000+ attendees, and apparently an equal number of booths. There are booths in the ballrooms, booths in the exhibit halls, booths in the hallways, booths in the pretty much every location but the restrooms (and they crowd right up against those, too). In the exhibit halls, the feel is pretty much “big trade show;” in the hallways, the feel is more “Middle-eastern street market,” or, during peak hours, “mosh pit.”

This year, the name may be changed, but the song remains the same — happy chaos.  This year, there’s no Digipede booth.  We’ll be camped in the HP booth, running demos of our software running on Windows Compute Cluster and some nice HP cluster hardware — and running between the many customer and partner meetings already scheduled.  I go to New York a lot — I grew up there, and it’s always fun working at New York speed – but next week promises to crank that up another couple of notches. 

If you will be at the SIFMA event, just email me (john at digipede dot net), and we’ll find a time to get together.

Here are some publicly available facts.

Microsoft Research has been doing amazing work in the field of vaccine design for AIDS.  Here is the Microsoft press release about the importance of this work.  

Here is Dan Fay’s most recent post about this subject.  Look who’s in his first sentence.  

Also public is the contribution that Digipede CTO Robert Anderson has made to this effort, including posting some code on CodePlex to get important parts of this analysis running on the Digipede Network. 

No more dots today.

Finance on Windows, a magazine based in the UK, asked me to write an article on grid computing.  I took the opportunity to hammer a few of my favorite themes, mostly based around my own analysis of the economics of distributed computing.  The article is in the May 2007 issue (now being handed out at fine financial events everywhere, or you can subscribe, or you can read it online. 

This topic is near and dear to my heart, and I’ll have a lot more to say about it (here and elsewhere).  The bottom line?  The economics of distributed computing have changed radically over the past few years.  When high-end hardware costs tens of millions of dollars, the costs of programming are small relative to other considerations.  When high-performance distributed computing systems can now be had for orders of magnitude less — the cost of adapting real-world applications to such systems dominates other considerations. 

 

Greg Nawrocki has noticed our finalist status for Microsoft’s ISV/Software Solutions, Innovation Partner of the Year award.  Yes, the Microsoft grid market is heating up.  Microsoft has recognized that the Digipede Network can help drive sales of the new Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition, and I think that’s part of the reason we were named as a finalist in this area.  You might not think of the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference as a hotbed of grid activity — but it will be this year!  I hope to see Greg and / or his GridMeter readers there.