High-Performance Computing (HPC) isn’t necessarily new. Large-scale businesses have been using so-called ‘supercomputing’ for years to speed up design and manufacturing, run complex simulations and even scout for new sources of gas and oil. The benefits are clear and have been for some time, but they’ve sadly been out of reach for most small and medium-sized businesses due to high running costs. That is, until recently.
While industrial sectors certainly make up the bulk of HPC growth, contributing $22.3 billion to the market’s overall value in 2021, unlikely sectors like academia, government and private firms are beginning to take up high-performance computing thanks to the cloud. Cloud-based HPC has been steadily gaining traction for a number of years to serve a growing trend for more flexible, on-demand services and the need to process increasingly large volumes of data. By the end of the year, more than 45% of all HPC revenue will be attributed to this new, cloud-based delivery model. This drive toward the cloud is throwing the door wide open for verticals and sectors that previously couldn’t leverage supercomputer technology due to budget or technical constraints. But why is this important and what’s in it for them?
Traditional on-premise HPC functions are expensive, cumbersome and require a lot of physical space and expert maintenance. Owning on-premise HPC infrastructure will still be the supercomputing method of choice for big industry players, but the average business is going to need something far more cost-effective, cloud-based and agile. That’s where HPC is heading in 2021. The cloud-based variant offers businesses a flexible tool with which to process data and drive innovation with virtually zero set-up time. Businesses that have spent years dismissing the obvious benefits of supercomputing due to the astronomical cost, occasionally renting their computing power from bigger companies, are now able to grasp the technology with both hands. The ability to configure massive parallel computing clusters on-demand in the cloud has completely re-written the HPC rulebook, and allowed businesses to soar with their technological wings unclipped.
Take your typical e-commerce business for instance. A couple of decades ago, the only customer touchpoint a brand had to worry about was what happened on the shop floor, maybe with the occasional delivery thrown in. There wasn’t really much data involved in tailoring a service or shaping the customer experience. Today, there are too many customer touchpoints to count, and everything from browsing and spending habits to online behaviour and ad impressions can be tracked, logged and processed to help a business shape its service. That’s if they have the computing power available. Until recently, large-scale retailers were limited in terms of what they could achieve, but cloud computing opens the door to powerful omnichannel analytics and forecast modelling that can have a measurable impact on profits.
However, recognising the benefits of HPC in the cloud and finding the right solution are two entirely different things. Speedier data processing is practically an essential tool in 2021, but how should businesses go about choosing a provider that will help them achieve their goals? As with most cloud-based services, it really comes down to cost, choice and flexibility.
Choosing a cloud partner that can deliver HPC completely removes the need for businesses to physically invest in any equipment themselves. A good provider will offer all the benefits and perks of remote supercomputing without requiring the business to buy or manage its own services - while this is certainly an option for large-scale businesses, it certainly shouldn’t be a barrier to entry for smaller, more agile companies.
One of the many benefits of cloud-based HPC or indeed any on-demand service is that a business should only really be paying for what it actively uses. Most providers will actually go one step further with this and offer fully flexible pricing models, giving businesses the option to ‘rent’ a fixed amount of computer power or simply ‘pay as they go’ with annual or even monthly pricing. Of course, security and a fail-safe infrastructure should also be high on the agenda when shopping for an HPC provider, ensuring 100% uptime.
So long as a company factors in the above when selecting an HPC provider, it will stand itself in excellent stead for the data-heavy years ahead. If businesses want to remain competitive, relevant and agile in 2021 and beyond, they can no longer afford to sit on the fence with regards to HPC. Thanks to developments in cloud technology, they won’t have to.
