Our Research Methodology

Intersect360 Research is a market intelligence, research and consulting advisory practice focused on suppliers, users and policy makers across the High Productivity Computing ecosystem. Intersect360 Research has been formed to provide deep insight and perspective around the dynamics of the current and emerging HPC market segment, including trends and influences affecting customer behavior, and technology adoption. Differentiating itself from other advisory practices, Intersect360 Research leverages the company's impressive database developed from 20 years of HPC publications experience.

The number-one goal at Intersect360 Research is to deliver data and opinions that are actionable. For market intelligence to be worthwhile, it has to give the recipient the ability to make more informed decisions, leading to demonstrable return on investment.

Voice of the User

Intersect360 Research achieves its differentiation by activating the voice of the user in the HPC community. Our passion to understand the motivations, challenges, and preferences that drive user behavior is what creates value in our market intelligence service. If you're a vendor, it can be the difference between knowing what your prospective users bought last year and what they'll be buying three years from now. If you're a user, it means your opinions are driving the future of HPC development.

Until today, most market research has been supply-side focused, providing statistics such as revenue, units, or market share. This creates a snapshot of a market at a moment in time, but these static images don't tell a story. Comprehensive market intelligence requires an integration of demand-side data, user-centric research that puts the picture of the market in a dynamic context.

Research Outside the Box

Our 360-degree research approach applies as much to the technologies themselves as it does to the organizations creating, selling, and using them. Just as we consider multiple perspectives in analyzing the direction of the industry, we also take a broad view toward the products and features that comprise a high-productivity computing environment.

The dramatic shift toward clusters of industry-standard building blocks has moved more and more differentiation outside the base server platform. File systems, accelerators, programming models, debuggers - all of these, and many more, are part of the productivity equation. By supplementing the Intersect360 advisory service with additional comprehensive research studies, Intersect360 Research offers you access to the research you need to guide your own path to HPC success.

Intersect360 Research Surveys

Anchoring our service are two comprehensive surveys of the worldwide HPC user community that are run annually -- the HPC User Site Census and the HPC User Site Budget Map

In the Site Census survey, users are asked to provide information on the hardware and software that comprise their HPC environments, including servers, processors, accelerators, networks, storage, operating systems, middleware, and application software. For systems we also ask questions on when the system was first installed and when it was last updated. From this information we are able to provide insights and forward-looking guidance on topics such as average cluster sizes, product life cycles, and new technology adoption rates.

In the Budget Map survey, HPC buyers indicate their current level of spending and their expected change in budget in the coming years. More significantly, they provide a breakdown of spending into major categories -- hardware, software, staffing, facilities, services, and utility computing -- along with further breakdowns within each category (e.g., within the software category: operating systems, compilers and tools, middleware, storage software, application licenses). Any category or item can be marked "Not In Budget," meaning that the funds for that category or item come from beyond the HPC budget. The Budget Map survey helps us construct accurate total market models, as well as providing insights on critical spending issues and trends, such as facilities restrictions and the uptake of cloud computing in HPC.

If you are an HPC user organization who is interested in filling out these surveys to gain access to our research, you are invited to apply for inclusion in the HPC500. If you are an HPC vendor or agency who is interested in the results and insights from these and other surveys, we invite you to contact us for information on becoming an Intersect360 Research client.

• Download HPC Market Dynamics Model and Fundamental Forecast Assumptions
• Download HPC 2010 Site Census: Demographics
• Download HPC User Site Census
• Download HPC User Site Budget Map