Melbourne University-born start-up Manjrasoft is showing its grid computing
technology around Australia's venture capital community in the hope
of raising $700,000 in seed funding, ahead of a further $3 million
to $4 million at a later date.
Rajkumar Buyya (Credit: Manjrasoft)
Founder and chief executive Rajkumar Buyya is keen to grow
his team of just half a dozen, and will require more cash to take
the product to its planned full commercial release in the third
quarter of this year.
"To really make a real business where we can create revenue of
millions we will need VC funds," he says.
The technology takes idle computers and links them together
into something more powerful. Originating in the university's GRIDS (Grid Computing and Distributed Systems)
computing lab, Manjrasoft's Aneka
software enables applications to be run easily across a network of
Windows computers, so that complex processing tasks can be
carried out at higher speeds by creating an organisation's own
cloud computing infrastructure.
Buyya, an associate professor at the University of Melbourne's
Computer Science and Software Engineering Department, says the
software is suitable for tasks such as finely-detailed graphics
rendering, calculating investment risk or modelling complex
drugs.
He says Aneka (the name is derived from the Sanskrit term for
"many in one") differs from other distributed processing tools in
that it is not restricted to just one model of computing.
Manjrasoft supports multiple application programming models
including Google's MapReduce software framework for distributed
computing.
"We wanted to have a technology that could support multiple
models for developing applications in one software development
kit," Buyya says. "That led to creation of a single container with
basic capabilities that can be extended to support different models
of application creation."
To really make a real business where we can create revenue of millions we will need VC funds
Manjrasoft CEO Rajkumar Buyya Buyya
The company was established in May 2008 and received a Commercialising Emerging Technologies (COMET)
grant to develop its business plan and commercialisation strategy.
Manjrasoft has received funding from the Department of Industry,
Innovation, Science and Research, as well as support from the
commercialisation arm of the university, Melbourne Ventures.
An alpha version of the product was released in December last
year, and has since been downloaded more than 150 times by
companies including Tata Consulting Services. A beta version was
released in March this year.
Early users include China Southern Railway subsidiary GoFront, which is using Aneka to
accelerate the 3D rendering of railway design prototypes using
Autodesk's Maya software. By creating a grid from 20 desktop
machines (which during the day are otherwise used for
word processing), Aneka was able to complete rendering tasks in three hours, which
previously would have taken three days to complete.
Buyya says he has also received interest from a US-based game
hosting company that is keen to find a low-cost way of scaling up
its platforms across multiple machines.
Commentary
Customer interest in grid and cloud computing should ensure that
Manjrasoft gets a hearing with potential investors, but whether they
put their pens to their chequebooks will depend on Buyya's capacity
to convince them of his business plan.
There is still investor interest in cloud computing out there.
In February the US company Appirio raised US$10 million in its
third round, while RighScale raised US$13 million in December. Both
technologies solve a different part of the puzzle to
Manjrasoft.
Selling technology that makes better use of existing technology
has already proven to be a winner — just look at the success of
VMware in the virtualisation space — and should have added spice as
companies scale back spending on new hardware. Handing a business a
high-powered machine cobbled together from its desktop PCs could be
a compelling prospect.
The fact that Tata has downloaded the software is promising, as
the company has shown a desire to team with both investors and
start-ups to get new technologies off the ground through its
Co-Innovation Network (COIN). Tata is already working with at least
10 COIN projects related to cloud computing.
Manjrasoft is also far from being alone in its marketplace,
competing with the likes of Digipede Technologies and DataSynapse,
and in the low-cost distributed computing market. The question is
whether Manjrasoft's advantage in catering for multiple computing
models will be sufficient to overcome the noise in the marketplace
from potentially better-funded and larger competitors.
Of course, the entire discussion is redundant if Buyya can't
find funds. And he is far from the only person looking.
