Groups.grid.org

Years ago I subscribed to an email list that has been routinely filling up my personal email account on a daily basis (I honestly forget the source, or what I was thinking at the time). With nothing else to do at airports waiting for delayed planes (which seems to have become a regular occurrence) I started reading some of them (Have Blackberry will read!). A couple of days ago an email came in from internetnews.com that caught my attention: “What Bad Economy? IT Spend Will Grow This Year”.

Lately, I have been paying a lot of attention to the economy watching for signals of any effect on high performance computing spending. The article was based on a report from Gartner, which in principle flew in the face of the market reality we were seeing, so I pressed on and looked into the story behind the story.

“Despite concerns about U.S. economy, a survey by Gartner finds that IT spending will see healthy growth in 2008. The firm reported today that worldwide IT spending will exceed $3.4 trillion in 2008, an 8 percent increase over 2007 levels.”

Odd. There had to be a reason why, on average, the total dollars committed to IT was growing when on a daily basis we were hearing customers and prospects talk about the need to reduce cost and increase efficiency.

So I pressed on…

“Gartner found spending even in times of economic uncertainty is supported by two factors: businesses are investing in improvements to internal processes aimed at reducing costs, along with their own innovations, and that globalization allows IT services providers to mitigate the risk of weakening demand by operating in more markets.”

And there it was. What we are hearing from customers is associated to “improvements to internal processes aimed at reducing costs”. Before we can truly understand this we should provide more industry-specific context.

From a tool…

To start, let’s frame the circumstance. We have seen that there is a revolutionary view of high performance computing environments. First and second generation infrastructures were built by IT as a service to engineering, research or science. The systems replaced manual processes and were thought of as a means to an end; more computing power. The construct was “throughput”, that is, simply a way to crunch more data in less time. The economic benefit of these generations, usually get to market faster, was fairly straightforward.

Over time improved modeling developments made possible the ability to simulate more business processes, and that in turn fueled the need for more compute power. The ability to use COTS components contributed to an explosion in use, size of problems solved and the number of computers in a cluster (also known as a ‘farm’).

After years of unprecedented growth HPC has evolved from an engineering tool or an asset to capture prestigious status including encompassing the fastest growing segment of the IT industry in server shipments; roughly one quarter of all CPU shipments; and an invaluable rank in the research, innovation and product development chain of most of the world’s leading companies in virtually every industry.

Then what’s the problem?

Having become linked to an organization’s value chain, like the personal computer many years before it, HPC environments are increasingly being viewed differently than in the past. No longer solely the pet projects of a visionary CxO clusters have become a strategic element of the product or service and a competitive advantage. High performance computing has developed from an asset to a value contributor by increasing operating margin in product development efficiency and helping revenue growth through product and service innovation.

That would suggest that the infrastructure has become as visible as other key elements in the value chain, such as manufacturing. That visibility will incur regular lifecycle management inspection as part of business process improvement projects linked to aligning IT spending to corporate goals. Moreover, a greater amount of efficiency and value would be sought from such a strategic ‘asset’.

“….the hot trend of 2008 is ensuring whatever a business buys has a return on investment (ROI) of a year, at most.”

Seeking Efficiency

Where would this efficiency come from? With the explosion of the size and sheer numbers of computers used in a cluster, many organizations were forced to adapt existing processes or create new processes, including the codifying of workflow, script wrappers and run books. Costs can be driven out of clusters through the development of a sustainable growth model that considers size, complexity, pricing paradigm and inclusiveness. Additional reductions can be realized by employing a systems management software stack that considers the holistic environment and not simply a single aspect of its use. Often, the server:admin ratio can be increased significantly if the maintenance of the system could be offloaded to automation.

“In the past, McDonald said IT spending was often a "target rich environment" for budget cutters, but that's changed. "IT is now being managed more professionally," McDonald said, and CIOs are being more proactive in making sure technology initiatives are given high priority. Plus, more IT budgets are being allowed to grow over the course of a year based on business need than in the past, he added.”

Conclusion

Professional management of IT budgets focuses and prioritizes projects on the creation of shareholder value. HPC projects, as we have described, are clearly in this category. However, budget management processes will always seek improvements and efficiencies. IT organizations are reacting and the conversations with customers and prospects we are having are a direct outcome of this lengthy process.

Moreover, these conversations are validation that the management of ever-growing environments is becoming more complex and that very complexity is creating new requirements for HPC systems software products. Increasingly ironic is the fact that organizations expect innovation and more automation from the very software that manages the computing environment that enables their innovation.