Live by Excel, Die by Excel

By By Derrick Harris, Editor

March 17, 2008

Although Wall Street firms are widely regarded as among the biggest, most cutting-edge spenders in the world of enterprise IT — doing and paying whatever it takes to achieve a competitive advantage — there is one area in particular where performance and efficiency are suffering because of unwillingness to let go of the past.

On the trading floors of even the world’s largest firms, the large numbers (perhaps the majority) of traders are using Microsoft Excel-based applications on their desktops for analytical tasks. However, given that data is growing exponentially in both volume and complexity, Excel is fast becoming a major hindrance to completing these analyses with the speed required to keep ahead of the competition. One might say these trading floors are giving rise to their own cliché: live by Excel, die by Excel.

Geva Perry, chief marketing officer at GigaSpaces, speaks of traders so attached to Excel that abandoning the software is not an option, even though having to wait up to 12 minutes for a simple spreadsheet refresh severely affects their efficiency, and sharing models can be a difficult undertaking in a desktop environment. Their reasons for sticking with Excel, though, are perfectly understandable: traders have spent lots of time and resources building their Excel-based models and, frankly, they like it.

Amnon Raviv, GigaSpaces’ director of strategic alliances, has tales of his own, including a recent fieldtrip to the trading floor at a large Wall Street firm where he witnessed traders running up to six spreadsheets and Excel-based applications on their desktops all day long. Echoing Perry’s take, Raviv said that both the traders and their specialized IT teams know and love Excel, in large part for its highly customizable nature that allows them to create new tools on the fly. In fact, he added, efforts by firms’ central IT teams to implement enterprise-level replacements to Excel often fail because of these affinities.

However, despite the love for Excel on the trading floor, the harsh reality is that Excel just is not designed to handle today’s increasingly complex and data-intensive analytic jobs, and in many cases has become “unworkable.” “Nobody sits down and makes a grand plan of how they’re going to build these Excel applications,” explained Perry. “These guys start building their models, and over time the models grow in complexity and the volumes of data — as they always do — grow and grow and grow, and at some point, they’re basically facing a situation where they’re using a tool, like Microsoft Excel, that really wasn’t meant for that kind of complexity … and volume.”

In an attempt to let traders keep their beloved Excel while simultaneously experiencing major improvements in speed, efficiency and reliability, GigaSpaces concerted with Microsoft to develop a solution that moves Excel server-side. Users of the new tool will benefit from GigaSpaces’ eXtreme Application Platform (XAP), which leverages an in-memory data grid to ensure fast access to critical data; co-locates data and business logic to maximize performance; offers automatic failover and high availability; scales linearly with commodity hardware; and can handle application written in a variety of languages, including Java, .NET and C++.  The end result, said Perry, is that users will interact with Excel like they do a Web browser, but with all the data access and processing taking place on the XAP-powered grid.

Stevan Vidich, an industry architect for Microsoft Financial Services, says the combination of XAP and Excel should be very appealing, as many uses of Excel require low-latency access to large volumes of data, and desktops are rather limited in terms of how much memory and data they can handle. What do you do when you need to access a lot more data, or when you can’t afford to access it from the same database where other users are competing for resources? Now, he noted, an Excel frontend can handle live market data, streaming applications and intensive processing. Since commencing work with GigaSpaces, when Vidich’s clients (which include Bank of America, Barclays, Citi and Merrill Lynch, to name a few) bring up their concerns about how to handle their complex Excel-based jobs — such as “non-trivial, not-so-perfectly-parallel” Monte Carlo simulations — Vidich brings up GigaSpaces.

“[The] perfect customer is one that uses GigaSpaces and has challenges with Excel on the desktop. And, I’ll tell you, that’s just about every GigaSpaces user because in their world, they encounter a situation where the volumes of data are very large,” explains Vidich. “How do you make changes propagate to all of the end users very quickly, and how do you not only process a large volume of data, but how can you do it with very low latency?”

Another selling point is that in addition to working with the presently ubiquitous Excel 2003, GigaSpaces’ solution also is compatible with Excel 2007 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, which can cater to thousands of users. Using Excel Services on SharePoint along with XAP, explains Vidich, calculations carried out on the Sharepoint server and rendered on a user’s desktop inside a browser also integrate with the data grid. And although Excel 2007 does not support Visual Basic, GigaSpaces’ solution will not suffer adverse effects as VBA code is converted during the upgrade process, said GigaSpaces’ Raviv.

Trader productivity is the No. 1 driver here, added Raviv, but “the IT guys are loving the idea that we can give them better return on investment and utilization of their datacenter, of their backend.”

As alluded to above, the potential market for a solution like this is vast. GigaSpaces’ Perry believes it will be a large part of the company’s business, as discussions have shown him that all of GigaSpaces’ financial services customers have “a very strong need” for it. According to Raviv, although the partnership is very recent, GigaSpaces already is in discussions with “at least a dozen” of the top 50 financial services firms (all of whom have problems with Excel), who are in various stages of evaluating the solution. He expects it will be two to three months before a customer is in production with it.

Additionally, Perry is excited about this partnership opening streams to Microsoft’s channel partners — something Vidich assures will happen. He said that a full-blown marketing and customer response campaign will take place at some point, and that although this is a GigaSpaces product, Microsoft will help broker discussions with its customers who are suffering because of their outgunned Excel environments.

If Raviv is correct, the Excel adapter should have legs outside of the financial market, as well. He points to the energy industry — specifically upstream oil & gas and energy trading — as closely mirroring the financial services industry. They also are using desktop-hosted Excel for applications it was not intended to run, such as Monte Carlo and value-of-trade applications, and they also have very large backend grids. The problem, said Raviv, is “they don’t have that glue, the ability to offload the data and the computation from Excel to the grid.” He also cites insurance and corporate treasury as areas that could benefit from this solution.

“This solution will be applicable to just about everyone who is using Excel and has a data challenge,” summarizes Microsoft’s Vidich, “because the trends in escalation of data volumes and complexity of algorithms used to do calculations is not reversible.”

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion XL — were added to the benchmark suite as MLPerf continues Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

MLPerf Inference 4.0 Results Showcase GenAI; Nvidia Still Dominates

March 28, 2024

There were no startling surprises in the latest MLPerf Inference benchmark (4.0) results released yesterday. Two new workloads — Llama 2 and Stable Diffusion Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire