HPC 2015-16 | Integrators
The Tera-100, forerunner of Bull’s 25 petaflop system, installed at the CEA
service. If a customer calls ClusterVision support, they will get someone who lives and breathers HPC.’ In the larger companies, the Tier 1s, this focus can get lost, he said.
Integrators understand the science Geography is important too, as it enhances not just local but sector-specific knowledge; Transtec’s location, near Stuttgart, means that there are about 200 engineering companies within 30 miles, all of them part of the supply chain of larger technology companies in the region – a classic instance of Germany’s famous Mittelstand. Apart from an original focus on academic computing, Transtec moved into providing workstations, which is still where the bulk of computational engineering is done, and which is still an important part of the company’s business. But proximity to engineering customers also brings with it extensive experience with CAE workflows, which can be utilised for HPC: ‘We know the workflow specifics of our industrial customers,’ Tennert added. As an HPC specialist, ClusterVision is
also a company with a background in science and research, Huggins pointed out. ‘Tere are a lot of PhDs and ex-scientists walking around. It’s a different persona from a Tier 1 – we understand the science a lot more.’ ClusterVision is based in Amsterdam and
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this offers a different advantage of geography. Te company’s offices are minutes from Schiphol airport and so, if there is a service issue that requires an onsite visit: ‘we’re perfectly placed to send engineers out to all four corners of Europe,’ he said. Historically, ClusterVision too was very
strong in academia but over the years it has branched out to installations in industry, to the point now where more than 50 per cent of its business is in industry. As is so oſten the case, the company is contractually restrained from identifying its commercial
“Customer care doesn’t start with selling and stop with delivery ”
customers, but they range geographically from the Middle East (almost certainly in the petrochemical industry) to Scandinavia (in the automotive sector), and in the pharmaceutical industry elsewhere in the EU. It also has industrial and academic customers in the UK. However, the company’s strategy, according to Huggins, is to go aſter industrial contracts in the 5 to 7 million euro bracket. ‘Tis is a growing area, where we see Cray more and more. Our high end is their low end.’
Tennert stressed that Transtec does not
provide the soſtware solution, such as Ansys, but rather the platform on which to run it: ‘Ninety per cent of the cost for the customer is hardware,’ he said. Sometimes, because the customer is not an IT specialist, they do not know what they want and the integrator’s job is ‘to give them the feeling that we understand what they need’.
Keeping an eye on the technology Te integrator also has to watch what is changing in the hardware market, Tennert continued. In his view, Huawei is very aggressive in terms of price in the server market, while Supermicro remains dominant, but is not always the automatic choice. Lenovo, which has taken over IBM’s x86 business, is still establishing itself in its new identity. He pointed out that the quality of Intel hardware is very good, but that that is reflected in the price and not all his customers want to pay a premium because they do not necessarily need the ‘nice to have’ features. At ClusterVision, according to Huggins,
‘We take pleasure in providing solutions to the market that are cutting edge.’ In his view, integrators can bring new technology to the market more quickly than the larger companies: ’We have to jump through
CEA-Philippe-Stroppa
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