CRN Reviews Digipede again

May 5, 2006 at 12:57 pm · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing

Just yesterday I compared the Digipede Network to Sun Grid.  One point I made was that our product is very easy to use . . .

Of course, I’m biased, but: stay tuned for an upcoming independent review that contrasts the Digipede Network favorably against Sun Grid on this very point.

Little did I know that the review would be just a day away.

The review Gridlock Alert For Sun Grid? goes further than I thought.  It slams Sun Grid and speaks well of our product.  You can see it all in the article’s subheading:

Analysis finds hidden costs in Sun platform, while competing Digipede offering shines

The article also specifically supports my earlier point.  The reviewing engineers gave up after spending five hours trying to get something to work on Sun Grid.  On the Digipede Network, it took approximately 1/2 hour.  In the reviewer’s words:

The difference in ease of use in Sun Grid vs. Digipede was enormous.

Thanks for the great review! 

CRN has a more comprehensive review of the Digipede Network here:  Grid Computing Turns .Net Into Enterprise Powerhouse.

Tags: .NET, Digipede, grid, SunGrid

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Screencasts and contrasting Sun Grid

May 4, 2006 at 10:05 am · Filed under .NET, Grid Computing

Jon Udell, lead analyst at InfoWorld, recently posted a screencast of the Sun Grid Compute Utility (Screening Room #4: The Sun grid compute utility).

I enjoy reading Mr. Udell on his blog and in InfoWorld as well as listening to him on the Gillmor Gang.  He brings together both the broad view of an industry analyst with the deep dive on the technical only achieved by a developer.  In fact, he is a developer (for example, he recently deployed metadata searching and exploring services for InfoWorld).

In the Sun Grid Utility screencast, Mr. Udell does a good job of quickly showing the major functionality of the Utility and the Compute Server project (i.e., Java APIs for communicating with the Utility).  The screencast is not too different from the webcasts we do for the Digipede Network, our distributed computing solution for the Microsoft .NET platform.  The quality of Mr. Udell’s questions in his screencast are on par with the best questions we get in our webcasts — he clearly groks distributed computing.

Sun Grid appears simple but is deceptively hard to use.  Simplicity was a primary reason we developed the Digipede Network: we don’t think distributed computing needs to be complicated.  I think we have been pretty successful at that.  Of course, I’m biased, but: stay tuned for an upcoming independent review that contrasts the Digipede Network favorably against Sun Grid on this very point.

The Digipede Network is a Windows-focused product that shares some similarities to Sun Grid (specifically Sun Grid Engine).  Here are some differences between the Digipede Network and Sun Grid:

• We do .NET 1.1 and 2.0, as well as command-line and other stand-alone applications.
• We have full support for COM on both the front-end and on the distributed program.
• .NET and COM developers can serialize assemblies, data and objects into messages do be distributed for execution.
• Our SDK and community site includes samples in many languages (C#, Python, PHP, VB6, VB Script).  We plan to put together a Java example, though honestly the demand hasn’t been that great.
• The SDK integrates with VS2003 and VS2005, supplying developers with samples, a developer guide, API documentations, and XML schemas for Intellisense.
• We have a Workbench that allows you to design your jobs without writing any code.
• Our Agents are smart about data and applications.   They can cache persistent applications and move data from and to file servers and web sites (in addition to the messaging described above).
• Applications can be configured externally.
• Jobs can be defined through XML or programmatically.
• We have a much richer user experience for control and monitoring of jobs through an ASP.NET Web site.
• You don’t need Solaris ;)

If you want to see this stuff in action, sign up for one of our webinars here or go to MSDN.  They recently hosted two webinars on the Digipede Network: Object-Oriented Programming for Grid: Grid Computing for .NET and Advanced .NET Programming for Grid Computing.

And Mr. Udell, we would love to do a screencast with you, too.

Tags: .NET, Digipede, grid, SunGrid, Udell

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Yes, what a week

March 25, 2006 at 9:36 am · Filed under Grid Computing, Web 2.0

Dan had quite a week (see his post, What a week!) at Digipede. We have a couple of new customers this week and a new release of the Digipede Network 1.2.

Unfortunatley, I wasn’t much help: I have been out most of the week with something my kids brought home from pre-school.
A lot of other things happened this week, too:

• Vista was delayed. Not surprising, but certainly disappointing. I guess this gives the ISV partners even more breathing room on the various Touchdown / BetaOne commitments.
• Mix06 happened. I wish I had been there — I’m sure Robert Scoble would have invited me to that Bill Gates Lunch
• SunGrid launched. And then was overwhelmed by a DoS (or just flooded by interest?).
• Tara Hunt unveils her Pinko Marketing Manifesto. It looks like she has some really good ideas here; however, I think her choice of imagery is going to be a stumbling block for too many.

Lot more too, but these are some that struck me.

Tags: Digipede, Mix06, SunGrid, Vista

Comments (2)