NZ Supercomputing Centre

Website: www.nzsc.co.nz
Global leader: Chris Quin, group general manager, Gen-i
Core activity: High-performance computing, applications and storage services
Revenue: Not disclosed — part of full revenue for Gen-i
Key customers: Geological Nuclear Science, Industrial Research Ltd, Microwave and Materials (Australia), AUT, NZ Bio-informatics Institute, Biomatters
Employees: Six full-time and contract

A standalone ICT services business operating under the Gen-i umbrella, the New Zealand Supercomputing Centre (NZSC) captured the attention of the panel this year following the success of its bureau service InterGrid, which is making inroads into the international market with initiatives like ‘Green Button’. This is a joint development between Telecom and InterGrid that allows international users to access NZSC online with ‘one mouse click’.

Steve Osborn, service online manager, Gen-i says the NZSC is actively developing new and simplistic ways to access large scale “on-tap” processing and storage capacity.

He ways this has been achieved by working with global partners to develop a set of APIs embedded into programs and applications to facilitate direct access. Customers can choose to connect to the service via a “thin client” such as a Sun Microsystems ‘SunRay’ terminal and run virtual machine instances in a secure managed environment.

Scott Houston, business development manager, NZSC, says the centre is about to launch several new initiatives around its open source solutions capability and will continue to expand internationally, where it acts as a bureau service for Gen-i custom outside of New Zealand.

“NZSC is New Zealand’s only on-demand high performance processing for commercial services. It stands alone [from Gen-i] in its business model,” says Houston.

InterGrid has offices in New Zealand and the US and has access to more than 3000 processors worldwide.
Besides Gen-i, the NZSC is partnered with Biomatters, which develops essential bioinformatics software to speed up and simplify research for molecular biologists and biochemists; GNS Science, a Government-owned research institute that seeks to understand earth systems and technologies; the Stillwater Group, and Urban Voyage, a specialist visual solutions provider of digital prototypes, marketing solutions, and visual management solutions.