LEIPZIG, Germany & MARKHAM, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Univa, the Data Center Automation Company and home of Grid Engine, today announces the kickoff of the 20th anniversary of Grid Engine software. Grid Engine is the most widely deployed distributed resource management software, providing the most powerful, integrated software solution suite for mission-critical enterprise technical computing and Big Data applications. Grid Engine, a precursor to Grid Computing, has stood the test of time to remain a vital cog in the machine of enterprise computing.
“It is rare for a particular piece of software to last for 20 years and even rarer for it to stay so close to its original roots,” said Gary Tyreman, CEO, Univa. “Since taking over the management of Grid Engine, Univa has singlehandedly delivered over 525 improvements, including our latest 8.1.5 release. Grid Engine has been vital to how enterprise data centers operate today and, considering the advances made today with Grid Computing, I look forward to the next 20 years.”
Grid computing has emerged out of distributed computing which was born two decades ago with Grid Engine in Germany. It is considered to be the most important evolution from the distributed but unrelated and uncooperative supercomputer to modern computing infrastructure in the enterprise. Today the use of grid computing has crossed over many industries, and its popularity continues to grow. Grid Engine, a distributed resource management software, was created 20 years ago in order to maximize the utility of computing clusters by sharing and prioritizing resources to applications and people that need them the most.
“Without Grid Computing, we wouldn’t have the Cloud today and we can all attest to how revolutionary that has been,” said Fritz Ferstl, CTO of Univa Corporation and father of Grid Engine and its forerunners. “The grid was instrumental in teaching us how to build systems that share and has continuously evolved and been at the forefront of many pivotal events, changing how we do business and view the world. Even as computing has evolved over the last 20 years, it is testament to the roots of Grid Engine and Grid Computing that they still remain so pivotal today.”
“Back when Fritz and I formed our company, distributed systems were new, and our expertise in distributed computing enabled companies to share resources at groundbreaking speed,” added Wolfgang Gentzsch, ambassador to Univa and pioneer of Grid Engine. “Under Univa’s management and with their improvements to Univa Grid Engine, the possibilities of grid computing and its impact on the future remain endless.”
Grid Engine found its beginning in HPC and University research facilities, but today it has evolved to become a vital mission-critical software in the modern enterprise data center. By enabling organizations to manage large numbers of computations, grid computing and Grid Engine now touches such industries as healthcare, genomics, oil & gas, safety, weather prediction, industrial design & manufacturing, crew & fleet scheduling, and electronic design. Pertinent to the future of computing, is the ability for Grid Engine to enable a Big Data infrastructure more efficiently and with up to 50% cost-savings on Hadoop deployment. Most notably, grid computing made it possible for researchers at the Large Hadron Collider of the European Center for Nuclear Science (CERN) to share data and discover the Higgs boson particle, one of the most important discoveries in particle physics.
Today Univa Grid Engine’s team is largely comprised of long time Grid Engine developers, including Fritz Ferstl, who conceived and designed the original Grid Engine at Genias, later Gridware, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems. With their legacy of Grid Engine knowledge, the Univa Grid Engine team continuously advances Grid Engine with an average of one fix per day. Univa Grid Engine is engineered, tested, and globally supported by Univa.
About Univa Corporation
Univa, the Data Center Automation Company, is the leading provider of automation and management software for computational and big data infrastructures. Our products and global enterprise support give our customers the power to manage their entire computational space, no matter how big or where it is deployed. Many of the leading brands in the world depend on Univa’s unsurpassed expertise, and premier services and support. Univa is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, USA, with offices in Markham, ON, Canada; Austin, Texas, USA and Munich, Germany.
