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Platform Enhances Commercially Supported Globus Toolkit

Furthering its commitment to open source computing and the development of Grid computing standards, Platform Computing Inc today at Supercomputing 2003 announced its Platform Globus Toolkit version 3.0, the industry's first commercially- supported version of the Globus Toolkit Version 3 (GT3). The production- ready Platform Globus Toolkit includes new components for full-scale and stable implementations of the Globus Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI) version 1.0, like the earlier GT2, provides essential tools needed to build Grid-enabled tools, services and applications.

"Platform Computing continues to demonstrate its support of open-source computing by delivering solutions such as Platform Globus Toolkit which provides real value for organizations by increasing GT3 production-readiness, and improving functionality, performance and heterogeneity. This will ultimately help them to fully leverage standards-based Grid solutions," said Dr. Ian Foster, Globus Alliance co-lead and senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and professor of computer science at the University of Chicago.

A number of organizations are presently testing Platform Globus Toolkit's new functionality including Brookhaven National Lab, Phillips and the Texas Advanced Computing Center.

Fully compatible with the complete family of Platform LSF and Platform Symphony products, Platform Globus Toolkit 3.0 features and benefits include:

• Community Scheduler Framework Support (CSF): Provides support for increased scheduling functionality, advanced reservations, query and control and new job-throttling support. The CSF delivers guaranteed third-party resource management system interoperability, reduced hardware and operational cost, increased system reliability and improved utilization of IT resources "as needed, when needed."
• CSF Plus - Enhanced MetaScheduler: Extends functionality to provide load balancing between multiple Platform LSF and third-party clusters, intelligent scheduling and job persistence, and increased scalability. Additional benefits include advanced job scheduling and scalability for higher productivity, guaranteed job execution for improved service levels, and enhanced system efficiency.
• Connectors to Third-Party Workload Manager Native Systems: Delivers a wide variety of native connectors for third-party workload management systems and Grid service providers, which lowers the barriers to Grid adoption and accessibility by increasing interoperability between existing systems and vendors and by reducing Grid integration effort and cost.

In addition, Platform Globus Toolkit will include extensions to support execution within Kerberos security infrastructures.

Platform Globus Toolkit's commercial support and value is augmented by the 7-24-365 availability of Platform's experienced technical support, an expert and deep professional services group and comprehensive and professional documentation, all of which reduce the technical and indirect costs associated with open-source solutions.

Platform Computing Leads Development Of Grid Standards

Platform Computing has taken an active leadership role around standards development in Grid computing. In November 2001, Platform was the first company to announce commercial support for The Globus Toolkit through Platform Globus. In June, 2003, Platform Computing announced the contribution and availability of the alpha version of the open source metascheduler framework called the Community Scheduler Framework (CSF), an extensible framework for implementing "meta-schedulers" which can negotiate with multiple-workload execution software systems such as Platform LSF, as well as other resource managers. By contributing CSF to the Globus Toolkit, Platform Computing will make this metascheduler framework available to a larger Grid community as part of a commonly accepted Grid toolkit.

Together with Globus Alliance, Platform and IBM have drafted Web Services- Agreement, a set of Web/Grid service interfaces and languages that provide a framework for expressing and negotiating agreements between a service provider and its consumers. Platform Computing's CSF makes use of Web Services- Agreement in providing a set of core services that can be used to address the scheduling challenge in the context of Grid computing.

Platform Computing will be demonstrating the Community Scheduler Framework in various sessions at Supercomputing 2003. For this schedule please visit link below.

About Platform Computing

Platform Computing provides distributed and Grid computing solutions that help enterprises accelerate key business applications, reduce operational and capital costs, guarantee service levels and optimize their IT resources. Platform's integrated desktop to Grid software solutions are used by over 1,600 customers worldwide in the financial services, government, life sciences, electronics and manufacturing industries to deliver higher quality products and services, improve business performance and maximize the return on IT investments. Founded in 1992, platform has strategic relationships with Dell, HP, IBM, Apple, SAS and SGI, and the industry's broadest application integration support. For more information visit http://www.platform.com.