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AUSTIN, TX -- United Devices, a provider of distributed computing software and services, announced today that Novartis Pharmaceuticals has selected the MetaProcessor™ platform for use in its in-silico research projects. The first step in the relationship will be to deploy the MetaProcessor platform to 1,000 desktop PCs throughout the Novartis global network. Novartis chose United Devices after a thorough analysis of several distributed computing vendors, including comparative pilot deployments. The pilots focused on scalability, security, and manageability, as well as speed and ease of application integration. Novartis plans to use a number of proprietary and public domain applications in addition to commercial research applications from Accelrys on the MetaProcessor platform. Accelrys and United Devices entered a strategic partnership in October 2001. "We designed and built the MetaProcessor platform from the ground up to handle the complexity of managing desktop PCs in a distributed computing network, not just as an extension of cluster software," said Ed Hubbard, CEO of United Devices. "Novartis' thorough requirements analysis and testing highlighted this fact and resulted in the selection of United Devices." The MetaProcessor platform aggregates the unused power of desktop PCs into a grid capable of running a wide range of high-performance computing applications in life sciences and other industries. By leveraging assets they already own, enterprises can expand the scope of research, accelerate the delivery of results to market, and drive product quality while controlling or even reducing computing budgets. In most large corporations, the computing power represented by the networked desktops far exceeds the power of traditional high-performance computing assets in the data center. For more information visit www.ud.com