Category Archives: Education

Education, High Performance Computing, HPC, Indiana University, Linux, Memphis University, Penguin Computing, University of Delaware, University of Virginia

Penguin Computing Offers HPC Compute Clouds Built for Academia, Research

Penguin Computing today announced partnerships with multiple universities to enable easy, quick and unbureaucratic on-demand access to scalable HPC compute resources for academic researchers.

“Penguin Computing has traditionally been very successful with HPC deployments in academic environments with widely varying workloads, many departments competing for resources and very limited budgets for capital expenses, a cloud based model for compute resources makes perfect sense,” says Tom Coull, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Software and Services at Penguin Computing. “The new partnerships help academic institutions with a flexible cloud based resource allocation for their researchers. At the same time, they present an opportunity for IT departments to create an ongoing revenue stream by offering researchers from other schools access to their cloud.”

Penguin has implemented three versions of academic HPC clouds:

Hybrid Clouds – Which are a local ‘on-site’ cluster configured to support the use of Penguin-on-Demand (POD) cloud resources as needed on a pay-as-you go basis. Local compute resources can be provisioned for average demand and utilization peaks can be offloaded transparently. This model lowers the initial capital expense and for temporary workload peaks excess cycles are provided cost effectively by Penguin’s public HPC cloud. Examples of hybrid cloud deployments include the University of Delaware and Memphis University.

Channel Partnership – Between Universities and Penguin Computing, allow educational institutions to become distributors for POD compute cycles. University departments with limited access to compute resources for research can use Penguin’s virtual supercomputer on-demand and pay-as-they-go, allowing them to use their IT budget for operational expenses. When departments use the university’s HPC cloud, revenue can supplement funding for IT staff or projects, increasing the department’s capabilities. This model has been successfully implemented at the California Institute for Technology in conjunction with Penguin’s PODshell, a web-service based solution that supports the submission and monitoring of HPC cloud compute jobs from any Linux system with internet connectivity.

Combination Hybrid / Channel – The Benefits of the first two models have been successfully implemented at Indiana University (IU) as a public-private partnership. Penguin leverages the University’s HPC facilities and human resources while IU benefits from fast access to local compute resources and Penguin’s HPC experience. IU can use POD resources and provide compute capacity to other academic institutions. The agreement between IU and Penguin also has the support of a group of founding user-partners including the University of Virginia, the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan who along with IU will be users of the new service. The POD collocation offers access through the high-speed national research network internet2 and is integrated with the XSEDE infrastructure that enables scientists to transparently share computing resources.

“This is a great example of a community cloud service,” said Brad Wheeler, vice president for information technology and CIO at Indiana University. “By working together in a productive private-public partnership, we can achieve cost savings through larger scales while also ensuring security and managing the terms of service in the interests of researchers.”

For more information about Penguin Computing’s HPC compute resources, please visit www.penguincomputing.com.


Education, Information technology, Scholarship

Online Tech Offers Data Security Scholarship to College Students

Online Tech is awarding two $1,000 scholarships to students interested in pursuing a career in information technology, computer sciences and healthcare information technology. The 2012 Data Security Scholarship will be available for the Fall semester of the 2012-2013 academic year.

Applicants should show an interest in cloud computing, data computing, disaster recovery, colocation and similar topics as it relates to the ever-changing fields of information technology and healthcare IT.

“Online Tech feels strongly about offering the scholarship in order to encourage tomorrow’s technology leaders to pursue higher education in their respective fields,” said April Sage, Online Tech’s Director of Healthcare Vertical and Marketing.

Scholarships awarded by Online Tech will be based on the applicant’s response to one of the following questions:

1. Healthcare: “What do you see as the best technology for improving healthcare and health IT?”

2. Mobile Security: “What do you see as the most serious mobile security threat facing consumers and/or companies and why?”

While the traditional essay submission is one option, Online Tech has also opened up the submissions to take the form of a short, 10-minute video or an infographic complete with a brief explanation.

All interested students can apply on Online Tech’s website by clicking here. Submissions should submitted no later than July 8, 2012. Winners for the award will be announced by August 10, 2012.


Blackbaud, Convio, Education, M&A Activity

Blackbaud Acquires Convio

Blackbaud, Inc. today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Convio, Inc., a leading provider of on-demand constituent engagement solutions. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Blackbaud paid an aggregate purchase price of approximately $325 million. Blackbaud financed the deal through a combination of cash and borrowings from its credit facility.

“This is an exciting day for the Blackbaud and Convio teams. Together, we can build better solutions for nonprofits, and that’s what drives us,” said Marc Chardon, Blackbaud’s chief executive officer. “Convio’s strengths in online and social marketing, and subscription and cloud-based offerings complement ours, and will accelerate our ability to deliver more to the nonprofit sector.”

“Having worked with both Convio and Blackbaud over the past few years, we are pleased to see this new development,” said Major George Hood, National Community Relations Secretary for The Salvation Army. “Being able to work with one vendor across multiple channels of engagement will be a benefit to The Salvation Army, and we are confident Blackbaud will continue to help us more effectively engage with our donors and supporters.”

Originally announced on January 17, 2012, the acquisition followed the completion of the tender offer Blackbaud made through its wholly owned subsidiary, Caribou Acquisition Corporation, for all the outstanding shares of Convio common stock for $16 per share, net to the seller in cash, without interest and less any applicable withholding taxes. Immediately prior to the merger, Caribou Acquisition Corporation held approximately 90.4% of Convio’s outstanding common stock. As a result, Blackbaud was able to complete a “short-form” merger under Delaware law where all outstanding shares of Convio common stock that were not previously tendered (other than shares held by Caribou Acquisition Corporation or Convio stockholders that properly exercise appraisal rights under Delaware law) were converted into the right to receive the same consideration paid to stockholders in the tender offer. Blackbaud assumed Convio equity awards that were unvested as of closing. Convio’s common stock has ceased trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.

Blackbaud plans to support Convio’s current offerings, and the companies’ combined research and development (R&D) teams will work with customers to improve and extend current products and build new offerings. Blackbaud plans to keep Convio’s current office structure, adding key offices in the Bay Area and Austin. Gene Austin, Convio’s former president and CEO, will lead the enterprise customer business unit at Blackbaud, reporting to Marc Chardon. “We are excited to work together to bring nonprofits the technology they need at a faster pace than either of us could have separately,” said Austin.

Easter Seals, an organization focused on providing exceptional services, education, outreach, and advocacy to people living with autism and other disabilities, has worked closely with both Blackbaud and Convio for nearly a decade. “In that time, each company has developed core, and in many cases distinct strengths, in the fundraising and marketing arenas,” said Steve Bergman, Easter Seals’ CIO. “Blackbaud’s acquisition of Convio will hasten the creation of new products that could enhance the effectiveness of nonprofits like Easter Seals.”Mexico, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.


Education, Emergency Notification, Intellectual Property, Patent, SchoolMessenger, Voice, Voice message

SchoolMessenger Awarded Patent for Highly Available Notifications

SchoolMessenger, provider of communication solutions for education, today announced it has been awarded a patent (U.S. Pat. No. 8,131,269) for a voice message delivery system and method which uses a highly distributed architecture to deliver extremely large volumes of mass notifications originating from many locations nearly instantaneously. The geo-dispersion technology allows the industry-leading hosted notification solution to achieve near-infinite scalability and an unmatched level of redundancy and performance. 

“When an emergency or threat happens on a school campus, our customers must be absolutely certain their message gets to parents as quickly as possible,” said Howard Wood, SchoolMessenger’s co-founder, chief technology officer and one of four inventors named in the patent. “Our patented technology not only delivers the highest degree of fault tolerance available today, but also supports near linear scalability of end-to-end capacity to allow for continued growth and expansion. Our customers know that platform size and scale matter when it comes to delivering uninterrupted service, and have trusted us for more than a decade to continually innovate and lead the K-12 market in fast, secure and reliable notification services.”

The patented technology in SchoolMessenger’s hosted notification system prepares voice messages and delivers them in mass, to a single recipient or to a particular group or household, more quickly and with a higher degree of redundancy than earlier generation architectures. It also provides the intelligence necessary to effectively allocate those messages across its highly distributed nationwide infrastructure, increasing the overall redundancy and resiliency of the system.

Even in today’s budget-conscious environment, demand for notification systems continues to grow.  Over the last 10 years, SchoolMessenger has delivered billions of messages for thousands of educational facilities in all 50 states.