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AVAKI Announces Three Customers to Accelerate Drug Discovery Using Comprehensive Grid Software ProductAVAKI 2.1 Is the First Commercially-Available Software Product to Combine the Power of Compute Grids and Data GridsCambridge, Mass., March 12, 2002 - AVAKI Corporation, a pioneer in global grid software solutions, today announced three leading drug discovery organizations have licensed AVAKI 2.1, the first comprehensive, commercially-available software to combine both compute and data grid capabilities into a single product. Gene Logic Inc., Infinity Pharmaceuticals and Structural Bioinformatics, Inc. (SBI), will use AVAKI's technology to provide shared access to critical data and applications and improve the utilization of information technology resources. As a result, these companies can speed their data and analytic products to market helping to accelerate the drug discovery process. "Companies in all industries are facing the challenge of bringing products to market faster and achieving competitive advantage. Life sciences companies are a dramatic case in point, because each day saved bringing a new drug to market could mean as much as $1 million," said David Fish, president and CEO, AVAKI. "AVAKI is helping companies like Gene Logic, Infinity Pharmaceuticals and SBI work more effectively resulting in significant cost savings and time-to-market benefits." Customers Gain Competitive Advantage Using AVAKI Technology Gene Logic is a leading provider of genomics-based information products and services that impact the drug discovery and development efforts of global pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. The company sells a broad line of information products that comprise massive quantities of genomic and clinical data, which are updated periodically, as well as robust bioinformatics for high-throughput analysis and data management. Gene Logic chose the AVAKI technology in order to maximize the use of its existing internal computing infrastructure, which has cyclical usage characteristics. The AVAKI technology will be employed to create more efficient utilization of this infrastructure, and more rapid completion of certain internal analysis efforts. "AVAKI enables us to better utilize our processing resources and to complete our internal high-throughput analyses in significantly less time," commented Joseph Parlanti, Manager, Computing Infrastructure Support Gene Logic. "It is a cost-effective solution that did not require any changes to our current applications." Infinity Pharmaceuticals is a next-generation drug discovery company developing and integrating unique approaches and capabilities in synthetic chemistry, chemical genetics, informatics, and biological screening. Because Infinity's work is both compute- and data-intensive, they turned to AVAKI. "The raw compute cycles required to support our drug discovery initiatives are staggering. AVAKI's compute grid provides us with technology that will reduce our costs and increase the velocity of our decision making," states Andy Palmer, CIO, Infinity Pharmaceuticals. SBI's proteomics-driven drug discovery business relies on high-end, high-performance computing to create its proprietary drugs and to complete analyses for customers. They looked for a grid software solution that would allow them to maximize the use of their existing IT infrastructure. "AVAKI was quickly installed, integrated into our computing environment, and in full production within a few weeks. Based on the analysis of competitive products, it significantly reduced the amount of development required on our side," states Dr. Kal Ramnarayan, Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer, SBI. "We are looking forward to the longer-term benefits of AVAKI's data grid capabilities, which we feel will facilitate data sharing and dramatically reduce the delivery cost of services." AVAKI 2.1 Delivers the Power of Compute Grids and Data Grids in a Packaged Software ProductAVAKI 2.1 is a comprehensive, commercially-available grid software product that provides wide-area access to processing, data, and application resources in a single, uniform operating environment. By offering the first product to combine the power of compute and data grids, AVAKI makes critical resources available across locations and administrative domains with different hardware, operating systems, and system configurations in an environment that is secure and easy to administer. "While these three companies are in the life sciences industry, we are also seeing demand for our technology from the manufacturing and financial services sectors. All see the benefits of improving access to critical data and applications and improving the utilization of IT resources," concluded Fish. "We are giving them a unique technology that can be used today to drive competitive advantage and improve operational efficiencies." About AVAKIAVAKI Corporation offers the first commercial grid software solution to provide highly secure, wide-area access to processing, data and application resources in a single, uniform operating environment. The flagship product, AVAKI 2.1, allows enterprises to capitalize on the true power of grid computing and thereby accelerate time to market, and increase ROI on existing computing infrastructure. Backed by Polaris Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and Sofinnova, AVAKI is located in Cambridge, Mass. For more information, please visit www.avaki.com.
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