April 25 , 2006
By Dylan Skriloff
Alan G. Labouseur from the Marist Center for Collaborative and On-Demand Computing visited the RBA’s Technology Initiative April 6 to share what’s new in the world of technology on his Poughkeepsie campus.
"It will be interesting to see what they are doing up in north country," Technology Initiative Co-Chair John Koski joked to the members who showed up for the talk and discussion at the Hennessey Center at Dominican College. Labouseur opened his dialogue by ribbing his hosts.
"I don’t have to tell you that you’re welcome to interrupt and make jokes at any time. With Les and John, that won’t be an issue," he said.
But jokes aside, Marist has been the beneficiary of a $2.5 million, five year grant from NYSTAR, which they have invested in creating the Center for Collaborative and On-Demand Computing, CCODC. Since receiving the grant in September of 2004, the CCODC has provided critical research for companies in the region.
The CCODC helped global company Data Synapse create an application that analyses financial data and corrects inconsistencies. By 'gridifying' 20 or more computers, with a lead coordinator computer directing 'slaves,' the Marist researchers were able to cut down the length of the analysis from 25-30 hours to 30-40 minutes.
"We did not invent the [gridifying] concept, but we are doing research. Folks at Marist believe they are at the forefront, they are in there," Labouseur told the RBA newsletter.
Another example of grid research being done at Marist is video encoding. Marist is the site where Emmy Award Winning documentaries are put on a server for whole world to see. This requires encoding the video into MPEG format, which takes a lot of time, and the gridifying process drastically cuts down on the time it takes to accomplish this.
Marist researchers have created a mainframe with 600 virtual servers; each virtual server able to perform any function without effecting others. Other businesses to have benefited from Marist research are 1-800-FLOWERS and the Dutchess Wine Trail. Labouseur noted that Marist has long had a tight relationship with IBM.
Marist engineers are also working to create a New York State Data Grid system for disaster recovery. By putting computers across the State, the recovery system would eliminate a central point of failure. The ultimate goal of the CCODC is to create ideas that spawn into independent for-profit businesses that will create jobs and wealth. At this time they are a non-profit, research enterprise and they do not seek to compete with private companies, Labouseur said.
Labouseur graduated from Marist in 1990 and said he didn’t want a "real job," so instead he went into business on his own and eventually started teaching as an adjunct professor at several area colleges. Ultimately he earned a professorship at Marist. He is also on the board of advisors of Les Neumann’s newly opened Hudson Valley Center for Innovation.
Following his talk the group opened the table for a productive conversation about the Technology Initiative’s future.
For more information about Marist College’s CCODC program visit this website: http://ccodc.marist.edu
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