Platform Computing and GemStone Systems Demonstrate Improved Grid Processing Efficiency Through Compute Data Confluence

New Event Driven Design Paradigm Delivers 98% Performance Increase to Power Grid Deployments

Beaverton, OR and Toronto, ON – September 18, 2006 - GemStone Systems, the leading provider of the Enterprise Data Fabric (EDF), today announced the availability of a benchmarking report with Platform Computing. Focused on event driven grid calculations in a risk scenario, the benchmark results demonstrate a 98% improvement in efficiency and 61 times increase in net benefit in end-to-end client response time, offering firms the opportunity to develop and deploy new grid models while reducing both time-to-market and operational expense.

Executed on Intel Xeon 64-bit dual-core processor based hardware, the benchmark report highlights the benefits to be gained by combining Platform Symphony’s compute grid with the GemFire Enterprise Data Fabric data grid in a grid computing environment. By leveraging the power of the underlying Intel hardware platform, the convergence of the Platform compute grid and GemStone data grid was shown to deliver a new event-driven design paradigm for calculating grid computations.

The event driven model triggers grid calculations upon data updates and hence the load on the compute grid is smoothed out, as opposed to the scenario of running all computations based on a client-request.

“The name of the game in grid is efficiency and bringing customers increased performance to positively affect the bottom line,” said Simon Lonsdale, Director of Strategic Alliances, Platform.  “The combination of Symphony, GemFire and Intel platforms gives end users further performance benefits on the grid, providing additional value to customers who have employed Symphony to grow along with their business.”

The joint use of the compute and data grids offers additional unprecedented design patterns such as:

• Intelligent advanced positioning of static data in a distributed in-memory data grid for immediate access by the compute nodes
• Data aware routing that promotes data-compute maximization by enabling intelligently delivering tasks to the appropriate node based on the data requirements of a specific task
• Intermediate results in a workflow style grid process are cached and distributed, precluding the need for a staging database that is typically centralized, latent and not scalable under parallel loads

“In order to maximize grid infrastructures, firms must have the ability to provision the appropriate compute power while guaranteeing consistent, low-latency access to enterprise data,” noted Juan Menendez, SVP of Business Development, GemStone Systems. “The convergence of the Platform compute and GemStone data grid deployed on Intel hardware enables firms to confront the typical latency, performance and scalability challenges impeding many current grid deployments, opening up new revenue streams and leading to increased profitability.”

“Intel is committed to working with key software providers to introduce and drive innovative, advanced technology to the financial services market.  Working closely with GemStone and Platform, the three companies offer a scaleable and functionality-rich high performance grid computing solution, all built on Intel’s high-performance dual-core Xeon 5100 processor,” said Eric Doyle, WW Director, Financial Services Solutions, Intel Corporation.

The comprehensive benchmark report will be available in the Intel booth, #206, at High Performance on Wall Street, September 18, at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York. The report can also be accessed at the GemFire Download Center by visiting http://www.gemstone.com/download/index.php?page=grid.

About GemFire
GemFire, the Enterprise Data Fabric (EDF), provides a scalable, distributed platform to manage increasing volumes of enterprise data and streaming events with almost zero-latency.  With advanced data virtualization, distributed caching and complex event processing (CEP) capabilities, the GemFire EDF enables the delivery of actionable information to the right application at the right time.

About GemStone Systems, Inc.
GemStone Systems is a privately held infrastructure software company that provides data services solutions for enterprise business architects and data infrastructure managers that are building, enhancing or simplifying access, distribution, integration and management of information within and across the enterprise.  Founded in 1982, and with over 200 installed customers, GemStone is recognized worldwide for its unique competency and patented technology in object management, virtual memory architectures, high-performance caching, and data distribution technologies.

About Platform
Platform Computing is the leading systems infrastructure software company that accelerates applications and delivers IT agility for increased business performance and reduced cost.  Founded in 1992, Platform is a pioneer in HPC, Cluster and Grid Computing technologies. Platform has over 2000 global customers and strategic relationships with Dell®, HP, IBM®, Intel®, Microsoft®, Novell®, Red Hat® and SAS®, along with the industry's broadest support for third-party applications. For more information please visit www.platform.com.