With a history of serving some of world's largest computer operators and now a new name, Cluster Resources Provo believes it is set to take advantage of the burgeoning market for applications delivered through large "clouds" of processing power.
Cluster Resources said starting Wednesday it will be known as Adaptive Computing, and a new unit will focus on products that help manage large data centers and huge banks of computers known as clouds. Cluster Resources will continue as the company's unit for managing supercomputers.
The new name reflects the advantages companies and government agencies can gain through managing their own systems or buying computer processing from the owners of large clusters of computers. In those types of situations, systems are needed that can change rapidly to meet varying computing needs, said Michael Jackson, CEO of the company he founded in 2001 with brother David, who is chief technology officer.
"You may come in at one moment and your computing environment has Linux on it in order to run certain applications," said Jackson. "But a little bit later, you need your system to be running Windows so you can get this other work accomplished and so you need it to adapt."
The company is a partner with IBM and Hewlett-Packard and other large providers of hardware for cloud computing and data centers. Its software also is used by companies such as Honeywell, Lockheed Martin and Yahoo, as well as the departments of Defense and Energy, and organizations like the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, China Meteorological Association and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.
"We deployed the Department of Defense cloud [with Hewlett-Packard]," Jackson said.
Adaptive Computing coordinates the computers within the cloud so they work together to deliver processing power and can ramp up or scale down services as needed, more effectively using resources. That can mean a better return on investment of capital resources and a lowering of costs for computing and energy use.
Initially, at least, Adaptive Computing sees its market with companies who use data centers, their own clouds, as the market for its products, said Jackson.
But the public form of clouds -- software and services delivered by cloud providers to other companies or organizations over the Internet or through closed networks -- will gain momentum, he said.
IDC, a Massachusetts-based information technology information company, recently predicted a three-fold increase in spending on cloud computing in the next three years. Microsoft also is trying to position itself as a provider of such services, seeing it as a platform to continue to provide its software to users remotely instead of installation on individual computers.
Jackson sees Adaptive Computing growing in step with the growth in the market. The company just hired three new people, putting its work force at about 60, with three-quarters of them in Provo.
It also has hired industry veteran Peter ffoulkes as vice president of marketing, as part of its effort to foster greater expansion.
Jackson said the privately held company has been financed without the help of venture capital.
