Microsoft acquires Cycle Computing to accelerate Big Computing in the cloud

From finding a cure for cancer to making vehicles safer to fulfilling the promises of artificial intelligence, today’s complex problems require the ability to harness massive amounts of computing power. For too long, Big Computing has been accessible only to the most well-funded organizations. At Microsoft, we believe that access to Big Computing capabilities in the cloud has the power to transform many businesses and will be at the forefront of breakthrough experimentation and innovation in the decades to come. Thus far, we have made significant investments across our infrastructure, services and partner ecosystem to realize this vision.

As a further step in this direction, I’m pleased to share that we’ve acquired Cycle Computing, a leader in cloud computing orchestration, to help make it easier than ever for customers to use High-Performance Computing (HPC) and other Big Computing capabilities in the cloud. The cloud is quickly changing the world of Big Compute, giving customers the on-demand power and infrastructure necessary to run massive workloads at scale without the overhead. Your compute power is no longer measured or limited by the square footage of your data center.

Azure has a massive global footprint and, more than any other major cloud provider. It also has powerful infrastructure, InfiniBand support for fast networking and state-of-the-art GPU capabilities. Combining the most specialized Big Compute infrastructure available in the public cloud with Cycle Computing’s technology and years of experience with the world’s largest supercomputers, we open up many new possibilities. Most importantly, Cycle Computing will help customers accelerate their movement to the cloud, and make it easy to take advantage of the most performant and compliant infrastructure available in the public cloud today.

We’ve already seen explosive growth on Azure in the areas of artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and deep learning. As customers continue to look for faster, more efficient ways to run their workloads, Cycle Computing’s depth and expertise around massively scalable applications make them a great fit to join our Microsoft team. Their technology will further enhance our support of Linux HPC workloads and make it easier to extend on-premise workloads to the cloud.

Customers like the City of Hope and MetLife have already benefited from the flexibility and scalability of Azure HPC data-processing capabilities to achieve faster and more accurate results, while saving significant infrastructure costs. We look forward to hearing many more success stories from other customers as well, and we’re excited for you to put Azure to the test.

In the meantime, I’m excited to welcome the Cycle Computing team to Microsoft, and look forward to seeing the impact their technology and talent will have on Azure and the customer experience.

You can also read a blog post from Jason Stowe, founder and CEO of Cycle Computing, here.

Tags: Azure, Big Computing, Cloud, High-Performance Computing

Original article written by Jason Zander >