The Register and The Platform Launch IT Publication for Hyperscale, HPC, and High-end Enterprise Shops

LONDON, February 3, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

- New Platform for High-End Technology Analysis

When it comes to IT trade magazines and news sources, readers have no shortage of options. However, for in-depth analysis of the stories behind the headlines, the options are few. This is particularly the case at the high end of the IT market-where hyperscale, high performance computing, and hyperconvergence are melding.

The publishers of The Register and the founding editors of a new effort to address those shortfalls are pleased to announce a new outlet for readers seeking to understand this momentum at the top of the infrastructure market. The publication, called The Platform, will track key foundational hardware and software technologies that can be used as components in modern systems as well as those systems that vendors create or end users build themselves. If a technology can be used to make a system have more throughput, lower latency, or easier to manage or program, readers now have a fresh source focused on in-depth content.

The Platform will bring together coverage of high performance computing (HPC) or supercomputing with advances among the hyperscale datacenter operators and cloud builders, all of whom are pushing the upper limits of scalability. These latter two organizations provide large enterprises either with technology to manage their most complex and demanding workloads or the inspiration to build such systems themselves.

The Platform will cover the key elements of the modern system, from processors, main memory, storage, and networking up through operating systems, middleware, and other key systems software such as databases and data stores, systems management tools, as well as cluster and cloud controllers. It will look at the myriad clustering technologies, from hyperconverged systems for virtualized enterprise workloads, to shared memory NUMA machines, all the way up to the core supercomputing systems powering top-tier research and enterprise organizations.

"We believe it is time to create a single publication that brings several different parts of the high-end of the IT market together to reflect the increasing convergence of systems and interdependence of workloads that are being brought to bear to solve tough IT problems," explains Timothy Prickett Morgan, co-editor of The Platform. "We also want to get back to the idea that depth and insight matter. It takes more than soundbites to make sound decisions."

According to co-editor Nicole Hemsoth: "All told, there are a few tens of millions of programmers, administrators, architects, and managers in the IT world, and probably somewhere on the order of a third of them work at hyperscale, HPC, and high-end enterprise shops as defined above. That is the broadest definition of our intended audience - and it is one that we know well."

The Platform will, Hemsoth notes, focus on the IT challenges of companies with more than several thousand employees and in excess of $250 million and their equivalents in the public sector. "Over the course of a year we will document these trends by tapping into user-specific stories that reflect the global economy at large, with stories from the manufacturing, distribution, retail, energy, financial services, public, media, and other sectors."

"At most companies, data analytics, simulation and modeling, transaction processing, and other systems are being wired together into what will become a hybrid platform. While financial services companies will analyze and model radically different things compared to manufacturers, they will perform similar functions nonetheless and they will seek to integrate their various application stacks to more fully automate the operations of their business and to have insights directly driving decision making," said Prickett Morgan. "This is yet another form of convergence in the IT sector that we see happening and that we want to chronicle."

Co-founder and co-editor Timothy Prickett Morgan brings 25 years of experience as a publisher, IT industry analyst, editor, and journalist for some of the world's most widely-read high-tech and business publications including The Register, BusinessWeek, Midrange Computing, IT Jungle, Unigram, The Four Hundred, ComputerWire, Computer Business Review, Computer System News and IBM Systems User. Most recently, he was the Editor in Chief of EnterpriseTech.

Co-founder and co-editor Nicole Hemsoth brings insight from the world of high performance computing following most recently a six-year stint covering supercomputing hardware and software. Hemsoth is former Editor in Chief of long-standing supercomputing magazine, HPCwire. She was founding editor and conceptual creator of the data-intensive computing magazine Datanami, as well as the conceptual creator and founding Senior Editor for the large-scale infrastructure focused EnterpriseTech. In addition to these successful publications, Hemsoth has over fifteen years of technical writing experience.

With support from The Register, The Platform will follow the next generation of infrastructure development, tracking its evolution and providing in-depth analysis of trends and movements in the vendor and end user communities. Backing the news-driven content at The Register, The Platform will provide those readers with an analytical take on the stories, giving millions of readers of The Register another source for more detailed information about the news driving the market.

"I'm thrilled to be working in partnership with Nicole and Tim," says Linus Birtles, managing director of The Register. "The Platform will provide the perfect complement to our existing technology news coverage and will deliver that rare combination of experienced, enlightened insight that is sorely missing from the market today."

"Tim Prickett Morgan is one of the best and most influential journalists in his field, and during his years at The Register was one of our most highly-regarded writers," adds John Lettice, editorial director at The Register. "I'm delighted to be working with him and Nicole on what will be a unique and ground-breaking publication."

The Platform launches in a few weeks and you can sign up for that launch at http://www.theplatform.net.

About The Register

The Register is a leading online news publication for IT professionals, who form one of the most vocal and influential communities in the tech world.

Contacts
Timothy Prickett Morgan tpm@theplatform.net
Nicole Hemsoth: nicole@theplatform.net
John Lettice: john.lettice@sitpub.com; +44-203-770-3147