Cray Targets Enterprise Big Data With New Open Agile Analytics System

SEATTLE, WA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/24/16 -- Global supercomputer leader Cray Inc. (NASDAQ: CRAY) today announced the launch of the Cray� Urika®-GX system -- the first agile analytics platform that fuses supercomputing technologies with an open, enterprise-ready software framework for big data analytics. The Cray Urika-GX system gives customers unprecedented versatility for running multiple analytics workloads concurrently on a single platform that leverages the speed of a Cray supercomputer.

The size, scope, and complexity of big data analytics is exploding and creating problems for customers who are already struggling with cluster sprawl, a torrent of new applications, and increasing pressure to deliver faster insights. The Cray Urika-GX system is designed to eliminate these challenges of big data analytics. Cray's new agile analytics platform combines the unique scale and throughput capabilities of Cray supercomputers with the convenience of an appliance, the flexibility of industry-standard hardware, and an open software framework that enables customers to innovate as they run existing and emerging analytics workloads. The Cray Urika-GX system gives customers a powerful tool for delivering high-frequency insights.

Optimized for demanding analytics workloads, the Cray Urika-GX system is pre-tested and pre-integrated with the Hortonworks Data Platform providing Hadoop® and Apache Spark®, as well as the Cray Graph Engine, designed for solving the largest and most complex graph analytics problems. The system includes enterprise tools, such as OpenStack for management and Apache Mesos for dynamic configuration -- all designed to protect customers' investments in the rapidly-changing big data software landscape.

"The Urika-GX is a dynamic analytics solution that brings out the best of Cray's decades of expertise in providing our customers with world-class systems for data-intensive computing," said Peter Ungaro, president and CEO of Cray. "Customers have asked us to blend the unique features of our product lines into a single platform for data analytics. We took the Aries system interconnect from our supercomputers, the industry-standard architecture of our clusters, the scalable graph engine from the Urika-GD appliance, and the pre-integrated, open infrastructure of our Urika-XA system and combined them into one agile analytics platform. The Urika-GX gives our customers the tool they need to overcome their most advanced analytics challenges today, and the platform to bridge to tomorrow."

Cray Urika-GX systems are currently being used by multiple Cray customers across the life sciences, healthcare, and cybersecurity industries. The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a non-profit research institute aimed at advancing the understanding and treatment of disease, is currently using the Cray Urika-GX system for analyzing high-throughput genome sequencing data.

"With the Cray Urika-GX, we had quality score recalibration results from our Genome Analysis Toolkit (GATK4) Apache Spark pipeline in nine minutes instead of forty minutes," said Adam Kiezun, GATK4 Project Lead at the Broad Institute. "This highlights the potential to accelerate delivery of genomic insights to researchers who are making breakthroughs in the fight against disease."

An exclusive feature of the Cray Urika-GX system is the Cray Graph Engine for fast, complex iterative discovery. Graph analytics has long been understood to pose some of the most difficult scaling and performance challenges for modern analytics systems. The Cray Graph Engine on the Urika-GX system, originally developed for the Cray Urika-GD Graph Discovery appliance, is typically ten to 100 times faster than current graph solutions for complex analytics operations. The Cray Graph Engine can run at any scale from a single processor to thousands of processors without compromising performance. With the Cray Graph Engine, customers can tackle multi-terabyte datasets comprised of billions of objects. The Cray Graph Engine can run in conjunction with open analytics tools such as Hadoop and Spark, enabling customers to build complete end-to-end analytics workflows and avoid unnecessary data movement.

"Analytics workflows are becoming increasingly sophisticated with businesses looking to integrate analytics such as streaming, graph, and interactive," says James Curtis, Senior Analyst, Data Platforms & Analytics at 451 Research. "An agile analytics platform that can eliminate many of the challenges data scientists face, as well as reduce the time it takes to get an integrated environment up and running has become a requirement for many enterprises."

The Cray Urika-GX system features Intel® Xeon® Broadwell cores, 22 terabytes of memory, 35 terabytes of local SSD storage capacity, and the Aries supercomputing interconnect, which provides the unmatched network performance necessary to solve the most demanding big data problems. Three initial enterprise-accessible configurations featuring 16, 32, or 48 nodes delivered in an industry standard 42U 19-inch rack will be available in Q3 2016, and larger configurations will be available in the second half of 2016.

For more information on the Cray Urika-GX system, please visit the Cray website at www.cray.com.

About Cray Inc. Global supercomputing leader Cray Inc. (NASDAQ: CRAY) provides innovative systems and solutions enabling scientists and engineers in industry, academia and government to meet existing and future simulation and analytics challenges. Leveraging more than 40 years of experience in developing and servicing the world's most advanced supercomputers, Cray offers a comprehensive portfolio of supercomputers and big data storage and analytics solutions delivering unrivaled performance, efficiency and scalability. Cray's Adaptive Supercomputing vision is focused on delivering innovative next-generation products that integrate diverse processing technologies into a unified architecture, allowing customers to meet the market's continued demand for realized performance. Go to www.cray.com for more information.

Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, including, but not limited to, statements related to its product development plans, including the timing of availability of Cray Urika-GX systems, the sales prospects of Cray Urika-GX systems and the ability of Cray Urika-GX systems to perform as expected. These statements involve current expectations, forecasts of future events and other statements that are not historical facts. Inaccurate assumptions and known and unknown risks and uncertainties can affect the accuracy of forward-looking statements and cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could affect actual future events or results include, but are not limited to, the risk that Cray is not able to successfully complete its planned product development efforts related to the Cray Urika-GX within the planned timeframes or at all, the risk that Cray Urika-GX systems do not perform as expected or as required by customers or partners, the risk that Cray will not be able to sell Cray Urika-GX systems as expected and such other risks as identified in the Company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2016, and from time to time in other reports filed by Cray with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. You should not rely unduly on these forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date of this release. Cray undertakes no duty to publicly announce or report revisions to these statements as new information becomes available that may change the Company's expectations.

Cray, the stylized CRAY mark and URIKA are registered trademarks of Cray Inc. in the United States and other countries. Other product and service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

Cray Media:
Nick Davis
206/701-2123
[email protected]

Cray Investors:
Paul Hiemstra
206/701-2044
[email protected]

Source: Cray Inc.

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