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techadvisor: HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTINGPacked with PromiseBigger data sets and sophisticated algorithms are signalinggame-changing business intelligence, and HPC provides the foundation.By Hanna HurleyIn an economy still waiting for its next golden moment,the high-performance computing (HPC) market showsmultiple bright points. Research facilities and universitieshave been the traditional HPC customer, but the interest inanalyzing data and running data-intensive apps is spreadingto financial organizations, oil and gas companies, retailers,pharmaceuticals and insurers. In the third quarter of 2012,IDC reported that these organizations broke HPC records,spending $3.3 billion on HPC technical servers. Customersproved they had a significant budget, spending an averageof $500,000 and up for high-end supercomputers. Inthat segment alone, revenue jumped 80.6 percent over theHPC Gets Down to Business PROS: Businesses have a growing need fornumber-crunching. CONS: It’s an unfamiliar market. BOTTOM LINE: Customize solutions with IngramMicro.second quarter of 2012 to $2.1 billion. For the workgroupsegment, classified as HPC systems sold below $100,000,revenue increased 7 percent.The compute requirements for research—analyzinggenomes or global weather patterns—have been in big demandfor years. What’s new and innovative now in the marketplaceis that interest in HPC is also moving into other businessenvironments. Retailers, for example, are crunching customerdata from Internet purchases, social-network conversationsand location-based smartphone interactions to predict futurepurchases. They are taking a vast volume of data that is in avariety of formats and systems and accumulating with rapidvelocity. Other businesses are leveraging high-performancecomputing for a rich set of interesting apps.A global beverage manufacturer is analyzing temperatures,rainfall levels and the hours of sunshine on a given day to bettermanage its real-time inventory. Having this informationhelped the company cut its inventory levels while improvingits forecasting accuracy by 5 percent in a key European market.Banks and insurers are using HPC to analyze the risk of sellinga customer a house or policy. Financial organizations are10 CHANNEL ADVISOR SPRING 2013