Platform Computing
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 1 January 1992 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada |
| Founder | Songnian Zhou, Jingwen Wang, Bing Wu |
| Defunct | January 2012 |
| Fate | Acquired by IBM |
| Headquarters | Markham, Ontario , Canada |
Area served | Worldwide (including United States, Europe, Asia) |
| Products | Load Sharing Facility (LSF), SiteAssure, Platform MPI, Platform ISF, Platform FTA |
| Owner | IBM (since 2012) |
| Parent | IBM |
| Website | www |
Platform Computing operated as a privately owned software firm, primarily recognized for its job scheduling solution, Load Sharing Facility (LSF). Established in 1992 in Toronto, Ontario, the company's headquarters were located in Markham, Ontario, supported by 11 additional offices distributed throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia.
In January 2012, IBM completed the acquisition of Platform Computing.
History
The company was founded in 1992 by Songnian Zhou, Jingwen Wang, and Bing Wu. Its leading product, LSF, was derived from the Utopia research initiative at the University of Toronto and benefited from partial funding provided by CANARIE.
Platform Computing's revenue expanded from near $300,000 in 1993 to $12 million by 1997, escalating further to US$46.2 million in 2001 and reaching $50 million in 2003.
In 1999, the company introduced the SiteAssure product suite designed to ensure website availability and monitoring capabilities.
On October 29, 2007, Platform acquired Scali Manage from Norway-based Scali AS, marking its entry into cluster management software. Subsequently, on August 1, 2008, it purchased the remainder of Scali’s operations including the widely adopted Message Passing Interface (MPI), which was rebranded as Platform MPI.
Platform launched Platform ISF (Infrastructure Sharing Facility) on June 22, 2009; this was its inaugural software offering for private cloud management that provided control over both physical and virtualized resources.
In August 2009, the company broadened its MPI portfolio by acquiring HP-MPI from Hewlett-Packard.
The January 2012 acquisition by IBM integrated Platform Computing into a broader enterprise software ecosystem.
Open-source participation
- Became a contributor to the Hadoop project in 2011 with an emphasis on improving the Hadoop Distributed File System.
- Platform Lava – a scheduler built upon Platform LSF and distributed under the GPLv2. It was incorporated into Red Hat HPC before being discontinued in 2011.
- OpenLava – developed as the successor to Platform Lava.
- Platform FTA – a File Transfer Agent tailored for HPC clusters.
- Developed Nagios plug-ins aimed at system monitoring.
- Community Scheduler Framework – a meta-scheduling platform.
Memberships
Platform Computing holds membership in:
Standards
Platform products are compatible with the following standards:
- DRMAA
- Intel Cluster Ready
- HPC Profile
- JSDL
- Open MPI
- Project Kusu, which serves as the foundation for the Platform Cluster Manager
See also
External links
- Official website for Platform Computing HPC Management Software
- Community user forum
- Platform Computing user portal offering downloads and commercial assistance