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ISV success stories
IBM, Absoft, and Linux—a team for a decade and growing stronger
What happens when engineers and scientists need specialized applications to help with their research and other analytical projects? In a world of multi-tasking, where people wear many hats, they often become software developers.
But the great variety of tools and other products required can complicate the development of such applications. Scientists, engineers, and developers must seek out numerous tools from numerous providers and deal with numerous purchase orders. The tools and applications must also be installed and configured individually.
This can be a huge undertaking, especially given that the users are researchers, scientists, and engineers, not necessarily professional IT experts and system administrators.
That's where Absoft Corporation comes to the rescue.
Absoft recently celebrated 25 profitable years providing complete software development solutions for scientists and engineers who rely on number-crunching software applications. Their development tools include best-of-breed compilers; debuggers; math, graphics, visualization, and message passing libraries; performance, optimization, and analysis tools; hardware monitoring tools; and much more.
Absoft specializes in providing bundled solutions and software development kits (SDKs) that simplify installation and configuration and provide a single point of contact for all of the tools a scientist or engineer needs to develop and run applications. Included is no-charge technical support for all tools in the bundle, no matter what company produced them, be it Absoft or one of its many business partners, such as IBM or Intel.
Absoft's SDKs are unique in that they are complete turnkey solutions delivered on a single CD-ROM. The kits are easier, quicker, and more cost-effective than installing each of the tools individually.
"There is essentially no competing product for the Absoft SDKs. No one else provides all-in-one kits like ours, so the tools from all the other companies must be obtained individually," says Jeff Livesay, chief operating officer of Absoft.
"Feedback from our customers is consistently positive. They say that our kits make a complex process so easy," says Livesay. "Installation is simple and typically takes about five minutes."
Absoft first went to market with IBM and now also sells a combination of tools developed exclusively by IBM. Absoft's SDK solutions are based on Linux® and support the entire IBM eServer xSeries, IBM System p, Linux on POWER, and IBM BladeCenter platforms.
"The customer gets their hardware from IBM and the CD from Absoft," Livesay says, "and right away, they're in business!"
According to Livesay, Absoft chose to develop their solutions on Linux because "Linux is a very popular and growing operating system, with widespread use in the developer community." He calls it "developer-friendly" because of its flexibility, reliability, and performance. Absoft was an early player in providing products for Linux and, in fact, introduced the first commercial 32-bit FORTRAN compilers for the operating system.
"Absoft's relationship with IBM is more than a decade strong and growing," says Livesay.
"Absoft benefits significantly from our relationship with IBM through the global support that IBM provides and the resources that are available," he says. "Their market presence, along with the IBM reputation for quality products, carries over to us through our close association."
"We receive end-to-end support from IBM that you don't always get from other companies' Business Partner programs," he continues. "The development resources and access to hardware and software, as well as to technical support and contacts, are beyond compare."
Absoft has taken full advantage of that access to contacts and resources.
They work closely with the IBM Deep Computing team to plan, design, develop, and market high-performance computing (HPC) solutions. The Deep Computing team exploits IBM strengths in high-end computing, data storage and management, algorithms, modeling and simulation, visualization, and graphics to develop solutions to highly complex business and scientific problems.
Absoft has been closely aligned with the Deep Computing team for the past two years, and this group has played a key role in the development of Absoft SDKs for this environment.
Absoft has also developed a close working relationship with the HPC software researchers at the Advanced Computing Technology Center at the TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York; the IBM Research and Development Center in Haifa, Israel; and the IBM Toronto Software Lab in Canada.
Absoft works with these labs to take their products to market. The labs have introduced Absoft's Common License Manager—a customizable framework for software license management—into their products for Absoft to resell. This has made it much easier to integrate the programs into the SDKs and make them even more customer-friendly.
"Working together," says Livesay, "we have been able to move into markets that would not have been available otherwise."
For enablement support, Absoft has worked on multiple occasions with the IBM Innovation Centers for Business Partners in San Mateo, California, and Chicago, Illinois, to port, test, and validate their solutions.
"Due to assistance we've received from the IBM Innovation Centers, we have been able to take our products to market in a timely fashion," says Livesay. "The IBM staff members at the IBM Innovation Centers are experienced, knowledgeable, and responsive. Though all of the work was done remotely, it was just as if the resources were available in our own machine room.
"All of the engagements have been extremely successful—a great experience! We've had a 100 percent success rate with every engagement," he continues. "We will certainly go back again and again."
Of particular note, in 2005 Absoft completed a special engagement with the San Mateo center in which they validated their High-Performance Computing Software Development Kit (HPC SDK) to work with the IBM Grid and Grow hardware and services solution.
IBM Grid and Grow is a solution designed to help organizations get started quickly with affordable grid computing. It uses an open, robust, and scalable architecture that adjusts to customers' needs and allows them to expand to larger, more powerful grid implementations when the need arises. Grid and Grow configurations are available on IBM POWER processors running Linux.
In conjunction with IBM Grid and Grow, Absoft's HPC SDKs for IBM Linux on POWER allow developers to easily compile, run, debug, and optimize high-performance software applications. The Absoft HPC SDK is a complete solution that includes software tools optimized for 64-bit extensions and is preconfigured for easy installation.
"The combination of IBM Grid and Grow with the HPC Software Development Kits is one of the most exciting offerings for software developers in this century. The range of innovative applications and productivity improvements for software development is virtually unlimited with IBM Grid and Grow coupled with the Absoft SDKs," says Livesay.
"This product combination can enable rapid new advances in virtually every scientific and commercial field of endeavor, unleashing the full capabilities of software developers and broad new classes of applications, products, and efficiencies," he continues.
Absoft joined the IBM PartnerWorld Industry Networks to leverage even more resources for their sales and marketing efforts. They participate in the automotive, government, education and learning, and healthcare and life sciences networks.
Absoft has used the industry networks' resources for direct mail and telemarketing and list their solutions in the IBM Business Partner Application Showcase. Most notably, they have taken part in joint marketing and demand generation with IBM through the Linux benefits for Business Partners.
Through the Linux benefits, Absoft has placed advertisements in eServer Magazine, a publication delivered to over 30,000 IBM eServer customers and prospects worldwide. Their teaming with the IBM Linux on POWER team has given them the opportunity to take part in a number of joint activities, such as announcements and press releases.
Absoft has joined the team in IBM booths at major trade shows to promote their SDKs with IBM hardware and held a webcast for which IBM provided the leads for hundreds of invitees.
As they become more familiar with the resources that are available, Livesay says, they'll be using them more and more.
What are the results of all of this joint activity between IBM and Absoft? Exactly what it's all about—closed business and satisfied customers.
Says Livesay, "We have provided software that has helped IBM close hardware deals, and IBM has done the same for us!"
Among the satisfied customers is the University of Oregon, where researchers at the Neuroinformatics Center have dramatically improved their application performance and streamlined their development process.
Dr. Allen Malony, director of the university's Neuroinformatics Center, said, "We have been using your SDK for just over six months now, and we have never had a better suite of compilers and tools. The HPC SDK on POWER delivers ease of installation and usage, high performance, flexibility, and reliability that is unsurpassed on the Linux ppc64 platform.
"In our experience, the HPC SDK Enhanced Edition for IBM Linux on POWER has required the lowest maintenance overhead combined with the best feature set for our ppc64 Linux development platforms."
Absoft recently provided invaluable assistance to an IBM field technical sales specialist who needed help with a hardware sale. The IBM specialist was in the process of running a trial with a major pharmaceutical company for a Linux on POWER cluster. It was just before the holidays at the end of 2005, and the specialist needed an SDK to be sent overnight from Absoft. The customer wanted a trial version to use in a benchmark the next day against a competitor's hardware solution.
Absoft came through. The SDK was delivered early the next day and was fully installed and up and running in five minutes, as promised.
"I have to say that both the customer and I were quite impressed with your product and its ease of use," the IBM specialist reported to Absoft. "We were particularly impressed with the modular approach and how one can easily modify the build/execution environment by loading and unloading modules—very slick!" The end result: "The customer has gone forward and ordered 30 nodes from us."
That's an example of cooperation and teamwork if there ever was one. It shows what can happen when two companies work together toward their mutual goals.
Livesay sums it up best when he says, "IBM and Absoft—it's a wonderful relationship!"
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