Satyam unveils dedicated grid computing

Satyam Computer Services Ltd (Satyam), has launched its dedicated grid computing practice and aims to become a leader in the space by offering customers consulting, design and implementation, conversion and maintenance services.

The grid computing practice is part of Satyam's consulting and enterprise solutions unit which accounts for 28 per of the company's total revenues. It has already struck an alliance with United Devices Inc, a US-based leader in secured grid solutions.

"At present we are investing in our workforce, building the necessary prototypes and acquiring the needed skills. In the next 12-18 months we shall recruit hundreds of professionals for this practice alone, currently we are working with half a dozen companies to build prototypes," said G Prabhat, director, consulting and enterprise solutions, Satyam.

Initially the company will market the service domestically and in the Asia-Pacific region but will offer the service in US and Europe at a later stage.

The company is expecting most of its revenues for the practice in the medium term to come from configuring the architecture of clients to enable grid computing, change code of applications which will run on the grid and systems integration.

Grid computing helps an enterprise maximise the utilisation of computing resources without any additional hardware and software investments, thereby decreasing computation time and increasing return on investment.

"We have realised savings up to $3.05 million by using grid computing over the conventional hardware systems for our client," said S Sundararaj, leader-grid computing practice, consulting and enterprise solutions.

Satyam expects grid computing to be most useful in life sciences, government, financial services, geosciences, multimedia and manufacturing sectors.

It recently executed a project for Dr Reddy's Laboratories (DRL), when it grid-enabled their molecular docking application and ran 59,000 molecules on a grid of 50 nodes.

"We reduced the run time from 25 days on a stand alone machine to about 16 hours through grid computing," added Sundararaj. The company also executed a project for the Institute of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, University of Pune.

Satyam has a grid computing facility in Chennai, with 200 nodes and a 200 gigaflop capacity and is looking at collaborating with leading product vendors to increase its competency and extend its reach globally.