UPGRADING the power and computing speed of your corporation's database system need not be a shock to your accountant's wallet, information technology leader Hewlett-Packard says. Last week, Hewlett-Packard introduced its Enterprise Parallel Computing strategy. An evolutionary approach based on using a few, powerful 'supernode' computers hooked up together to provide processing power, rather than the conventional approach to distributed computing - massively parallel processing - which uses many, less powerful processers. 'Many vendors believe that more nodes must be better,' Anthony Lai, marketing manger of Hewlett-Packard Hong Kong said. 'We use a best-of-tools-for-the-job approach. You would pull a wagon with two Clydesdale horses, not a hundred ducks. 'What customers want and need is scalable performance and the ability to flexibly add computing power. This reduces the risk for consumers,' Nigel Ball, Hewlett-Packard's marketing manager for its general systems division, said. Mr Ball said that legacy database systems are currently being rapidly replaced in favour of open, distributed systems.
