IBM has introduced a new grid-computing product to help life insurance companies cut the time needed to run complex insurance model scenarios. Called IBM Grid and Grow for Actuarial Analysis, the offering combines IBM and IBM business partner and ISV technologies to help insurers gain competitive advantage, improve financial risk and capital management, and get to market faster with new products. At the heart of the system is IBM's BladeCenter to power the grid. Using the IBM solution, actuaries receive results much quicker, making it possible for them to run more calculations and tune their models to improve accuracy. The ability to model more accurate, complex financial scenarios is a key to gaining competitive edge. It also helps meet regulatory compliance and reporting demands. "With grid computing, infrastructures are faster and more resilient, automatically circumventing hardware failures or capacity issues to ensure complex queries complete in an accelerated fashion," says Ken King, vice president, Grid Computing, IBM. "For insurance companies, as with almost any business, the ability to understand the balance between risk and reward in a timely manner is crucial to success. Grid computing can do weeks of work in mere hours, and the time saved can make a difference in the marketplace." The Actuarial Analysis solution is a packaged set of hardware, software, and services leveraging grid ISV products such as DFA Capital Management's ADVISE; GGY's AXIS; Milliman's MGoALFA; and SunGard's iWORKS Prophet as well as middleware from IBM business partners DataSynapse and Platform Computing. IBM's Grid and Grow program was launched in August 2005 to allow businesses to incorporate grid computing into their infrastructure. IBM has specialized grid offerings that provide hardware, software, and middleware packages for a variety of industries including financial services and medical archiving.