Sajjadhussainkhazipura, General Manager, HPC Practice, Wipro Technologies

“Parallel computing is the future, and we’re betting on the Windows platform to help our customers take advantage of all its benefits.”

SajjadHussainKhazipura, General Manager, HPC Practice, Wipro Technologies

Wipro, a Global System Integrator, works with Microsoft to develop industry-specific solutions for parallel computing and other technologies such as the Windows Azure technology platform. By doing so, the company is adding value for its existing customers and attracting new customers with solutions that help streamline business operations, accelerate business processes, and shorten time-to-market.

Business Needs

Wipro Technologies is one of world’s premier IT companies, with a client base of Fortune 1000 and Global 500 companies. The company—a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner—helps enterprises worldwide improve business processes with a range of offerings, including research and development, systems integration, and application development tailored for specific industries such as oil and gas, manufacturing, and financial services.

Wipro customers wanted more computational power to accomplish the complex processing and simulation tasks that have become standard operating procedure in many industries. Companies had to wait too long to get results, which meant delays in time-to-market and productivity lags for employees.

In the past, those customers mitigated the problem by implementing high-performance computing (HPC) systems based on UNIX or Linux, but those systems required a lot of custom integration and specialized management expertise. “HPC used to be available to a limited set of users,” saysSajjadHussainKhazipura, General Managerof the HPC Practice at Wipro Technologies. “We wanted to bring HPC capabilities to more companies so that they could enjoy the benefits of parallel computing.”

Solution

With the release of the Windows HPC Server 2008 operating system, Wipro recognized an opportunity. “We saw Windows HPC Server 2008 as a great way for us to help more customers take advantage of HPC because of familiarity with the Windows platform and the operating system’s integration with other Microsoft solutions,” says Khazipura. The company began working with Microsoft to create four HPC Solutions that use Windows HPC Server 2008, both on-premises and in conjunction with the Windows Azure technology platform.

One of the solutions focuses on the oil and gas, manufacturing, and financial services industries. The solution streamlines job workflow management for batch and online jobs running either on-premises or in an off-site data center, and it can be customized for each workflow process. For on-premises server clusters, the solution handles hybrid clusters that run multiple operating systems as well as those running Windows HPC Server 2008 exclusively. It includes an HPC Job Submittal Portal that is based on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 or as a web role instance on Windows Azure.

Another solution pertains to data management for the oil and gas, manufacturing, and media and entertainment industries. The solution willoffer a policy-based hierarchical HPC data management framework with wrappers for encrypted storage in the cloud, ensuring data consistency, variable latency, uniform access, highly available data, and reduced storage costs. The solution willrun on Windows HPC Server 2008, which connects hybrid clusters with Windows Azure for data storage.

Wipro and Microsoft also are developing a solution based on HPC Services for Excel (which works with Microsoft Excel 2010 spreadsheet software) that accelerates calculations for financial services and oil and gas trading applications. The solution willoffload critical, time-consuming workbook functions, both native and user-defined, to Windows HPC Server 2008 clusters and general processing units. “Customers can expect a faster time-to-result, increased employee productivity, and nearly real-time predictive analytics,” says Khazipura. “They’ll also be able to determine on-demand financial derivative pricing for an improved time-to-market.”

Wipro continues to work with Microsoft on developing industry-specific applications that make more computing power available to more customers. For example, Wipro is building a scaling methodology on Windows HPC Server 2008 and Windows Azureto help companies scale their older, data-intensive applications.

Benefits

Wipro is delivering strategic value to customers, who can expedite their processes in a comfortable, integrated environment. “Parallel computing is the future, and we’re betting on the Windows platform to help our customers take advantage of all its benefits,” saysKhazipura.

• Interoperable, optimized solutions. Wipro customers who adopt specialized solutions based on Windows HPC Server 2008 have ready access to cloud-based computing because of the tight interoperability with Windows Azure. They also are able to make better use of their clusters in terms of licensing, availability, and efficiency. Because the operating system components work so closely with other Microsoft technologies, customers have the flexibility to structure their solutions to promote maximum efficiency.

• Positive user experience. Wipro has developed its HPC solutions so that customers can submit jobs in a unified way, whether their clusters are based on Microsoft or hybrid technologies. Customers also are familiar with working in and managing a Windows environment.

• Extended value to existing customers. For Wipro, Windows HPC Server 2008 presents an opportunity to enhance its value to customers, who already count on the company to address their challenges through new technologies. Wiprois using the operating systemto help its customers benefit from HPC and run their existing applications on a parallel infrastructure for faster processing, analysis, and time-to-market.

• Expanded market opportunity. Wipro views its work with Windows HPC Server–based clusters as effective in attracting new business. “It helps interest new customers in the strategic value that we can add for them, especially when we talk about harnessing the power of HPC in conjunction with cloud computing,” says Khazipura.