2013 Review - Part II

In the next part of our 2013 review we're taking a closer look at what the second quarter of the year. We squeezed plenty into Q1, but could we top it in Q2?

Boston Victorious at 2013 Green IT Awards

We kicked off Q2 with the excellent news that the ARM-based Boston Viridis won the "One to Watch" award at the 2013 Green IT Awards. The award recognises the potential of the Viridis platform and the innovative approach taken by Boston in developing the world's first ARM-based microserver - the first that's fit for an enterprise datacentre. Following on from the official launch of the Viridis in 2012, and hot on the heels of the launch of the Viridis-based ARM-as-a-Service platform, winning a Green IT Award was a wonderful pat on the back for everyone working on the Viridis project.

Boston Heads to Leipzig for ISC'13

ISC'13 was Boston's next major event, and the team travelled back to Germany, this time to Leipzig, to discuss how the ARM-based Viridis microserver delivers high density computing at ultra-low power usage levels. Alongside showing off the Viridis, Boston also collaborated with CoolIT Systems, Solarflare, and Supermicro to demonstrate additional high performance technology.

With CoolIT Systems we helped demonstrate how their Direct Contact Liquid Cooling technology can be applied to the Supermicro FatTwin; and Supermicro, along with Solarflare, showed a Hyper-Speed server that utilises enterprise-class overclocking and low latency networking to maximise performance without sacrificing stability. The collaboration did not stop there, however. Boston sponsored the University of Edinburgh EPCC (Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre) team for the Student Cluster Challenge that runs alongside the conference. The team competed admirably against competitors from around the world and finished the challenge as the fastest European cluster, coming 2nd in the LINPACK test and delivering the most FLOPS per node. An absolutely heroic effort!

HPC Microsite Launched

Q2 also saw the official launch of the dedicated Boston HPC microsite, designed to focus on the latest news and product developments within Boston's High Performance Computing division. The site launched with insights into the Boston xScaler and dataScaler ranges, which use best of breed technology to offer flexible solutions to help manage the explosion of big data and gain a competitive advantage through high performance computing.

Nerve Summit with ARM

The Nerve summit is dedicated to showcasing the world's most ground-breaking and disruptive technologies. The event is an exciting collection of ideas that could change the world, and Boston was delighted that the ultra-low power ARM-based Viridis microserver was selected by ARM as a demonstration of computing hardware that's sensitive to environmental issues around powering datacentres. Nerve is a fascinating event with some impressive names on the speakers list, which this year included Harold ‘Sonny' White, a man famous for exploring the feasibility of building a Star Trek-esque warp drive. Will he one day help us boldly go where no one has gone before?

More Product Reviews!

We finish off quarter with two great reviews, the Igloo 2U-24T-Stor reviewed by ITPro and the Value Series 115T reviewed by PCPro.

ITPro were impressed by the combination of high storage capacity and Intel Xeon E5 performance in the Igloo 2U-24T-Stor, and summed it up as "a good choice for SMBs as it offers a big capacity and heaps of features" and "it's easy to deploy and use and is 10-Gigabit ready out of the box". The Igloo 2U-24T-Stor also received the ITPro Value award and 4/5 stars. A great review for a great product!

The Value Series 115T gained praise from PCPro for delivering a high core count and fast storage at a very attractive price point. PCPro also made an interesting comparison between the Boston Value Series 115T and the Dell PowerEdge T110 II, highlighting that "The 115T costs a similar sum but offers double the CPU core count, a fast SAS2-embedded disk controller, and superior remote management". The review ended with "all in all, this pedestal server should definitely make your shortlist". We can't really put it better than that ourselves!

On reflection...

A packed Q2 - between winning awards, launching new websites, and being at the sharp end of disruptive technology, it's a wonder the Boston team had time to pause and take a breath! With the first half of the year done, it's now time to take a look at Q3.