I also read the news today, yet other lists are quiet about this announcement,
so I will also share my thoughts on the SGE list.
I think it is good for Platform to find a new home, as the original organic
growth period was behind when SGE was opensourced in 2001 (thanks Sun - we will
remember you!). If you look at the revenue in 2001, Platform had US$ 46.2
million. Compare that to the recent revenue of $71.6 million, Platform grew 55%
in 9 years. However, if you look at the growth rate of Platform before 2000,
Platform grew at least 50% per year. Of course as companies are larger it is
harder to grow, but another factor is that there are more Platform LSF
competitors, like SGE, Torque/Maui, Condor, SLURM, etc, and they have similar
functionalities but are much cheaper.
And then Platform bought Scali & HP MPI and merged into Platform MPI, which
competes with MPICH & OpenMPI. However, OpenMPI is used by the TOP500 #1 K
computer, so I believe Platform MPI does not have a lot of technical advantage
over open source products.
Datasynapse was bought by Tibco in 2009, and we don't hear a lot of Platform
Symphony. So I assume this sector is not extremely hot selling that has revenue
growth of 50% YoY.
Finally, Platform ISF is supposed to be the next bang for Platform, just like
LSF. However, OpenStack is supported by over 100 companies, including AMD,
Intel, Cisco, HP & Dell (with the major exception of IBM), and OpenStack is
growing faster in terms of features & support than Eucalyptus or ISF.
I don't hate Platform, and I even have friends who work (and/or worked) for
Platform in Toronto & China. However, I don't think Platform alone can survive
on its own 10 years from now if not acquired by a big company like IBM or HP --
when open source software & applications are good enough, there is much less
room for expensive commercial products.
--Chi
On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Rayson Ho <rayray...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On a related note I was talking to a former Platform person who I'm sure
> many of us know on this list and he mentioned that the stripped down older
> variant of Platform LSF that platform produced back in the day ("lava") has
> a new open source home and developer group:
>
> http://openlava.net/
Hmm, OpenLava is not backed by Platform Computing... and according to
the domain record, seems like the project is started by a Bright
Computing employee.
BTW, given IBM's open source track record, I believe Platform LSF will
be a bit more open when IBM finally takes control.
Rayson
>
> -Chris
>
>
>
> Rayson Ho wrote:
>>
>>
>> http://www.platform.com/press-releases/2011/IBMtoAcquireSystemSoftwareCompanyPlatformComputingtoExtendReachofTechnicalComputing
>>
>> Not sure what's going to happen to Loadleveler...
>
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