Compete in the HPC market at your peril

Attracted by predictions of substantial market growth, competition in the UK High Performance Computing (HPC) integrator market is expected to increase.

Existing integrators, resellers and VARs – and new entrants - will need to operate at the highest level as customers have their pick of partners and turn to those businesses demonstrating grade one credentials:

1. Understand the customer. HPC integrators must demonstrate a thorough understanding of their customers’ markets. Integrators must be able to understand what customers are trying to achieve, why their research or project is important and why they are trying to do it in that way.

2. Demonstrate history. As budgets grow and aggregate, customers are more wary and cautious of investment. Customers are looking for integrators with experience, a history and proven track record in delivering HPC solutions.

3. Hardware vendor relationship. In many instances, HPC solutions built for customers are firsts, fastest, largest and often unique. Some integrators will ‘play one hardware vendor off against the other’, or propose solutions based on hardware outside of the traditional Tier 1 manufacturers. However, when you’re working on the leading edge, problems can occur so it is essential for customers to know that integrators have a close and long-term relationship with the primary hardware supplier.

4. The HPC ecosystem. A single IT vendor cannot always supply the whole HPC solution - server, storage, interconnect, operating system, applications, etc. Customers therefore need a well connected integrator that can call on existing technology partner relationships to enhance solutions from the primary hardware vendor.

5. Technology innovation. Customers look to integrators to provide solutions based on the best technology available. Integrators must therefore react to technology innovation quickly.

6. Protect the environment. Environmentally conscious customers will be looki ng for integrators that can meet not just their computing needs, but also their green needs and this means designing more complex solutions; for example using larger numbers of lower powered processors or vastly improved efficiency using virtualisation technology.

Only a tiny number of integrators, resellers and VARs will be able to demonstrate this sector knowledge, company history & heritage, technology expertise, flexibility to scale-up for increasingly larger budgets and ability to utilise new innovative technologies.

In the HPC world it is about to become very difficult to be the ‘new kid on the block’ and even existing players who cannot demonstrate grade one credentials and best practice will find it tough to compete.

Integrators, resellers and VARs: compete in the HPC market at your peril.

Julian Fielden is managing director of OCF