News

posted on 11 February 2008 09:41

This week Panasas is being launched into the UK as a leader in parallel clustered storage, technology which is a intended for High Performance Computing (HPC) data management.

With IDC expecting the storage market for high performance computing to reach $4.8 billion in 2008, there is no doubt that finding the right storage to support the rapidly growing amounts of data being produced by HPCs is of paramount importance. 

Clustered storage is emerging as a highly-rated technology for expanding file systems and providing extreme scale-out ability for Web 2.0/cloud computing environments as well as the traditional HPC and movie rendering application areas.

Competing companies for Panasas include F5 (Acopia), Isilon, NetApp with ONTAP GX  and soon-to-arrive HP with MSO. EMC has pre-announced its Hulk and Maui technology and IBM has bought Israel-based XIV for its technology.

The whole clustered storage area is hotting up rapidly. Panasas is no doubt looking to be one of the clustered storage boats lifted up by the rising tide of interest. To do so it needs to hold on to its HPC customers and expand out of its HPC market niche.

The company has just announced a client win with TELE-RILEVAMENTO EUROPA. TRE was established in 2000, and is the leading global expert in data processing services derived from satellite-born Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR).

TRE is able to detect, measure and monitor geophysical phenomena (e.g. subsidence, uplift, landslides, seismic faults, etc.) and verify the stability of individual buildings. Its customers include some of the world’s leading government bodies, energy companies, academic research institutes and space agencies.

TRE used to have a Fibre Channel SAN. It proved a bottleneck through having serial access to the storage resources. The Panasas system cut production time by 50 percent.