Amazon Web Services (AWS) is bolstering its high-performance computing (HPC) efforts with the acquisition of Italian software and services company Nice Software s.r.l.

AWS didn’t divulge many details, but chief evangelist Jeff Barr did comment on the reasoning behind the acquisition in a blog post. “These [Nice] products help customers to optimize and centralize their high-performance computing and visualization workloads,” he wrote. “They also provide tools that are a great fit for distributed workforces making use of mobile devices.”

AWS isn’t planning on integrating Nice’s products with its own offerings immediately, however. In his blog post, Barr said the Nice team and brand will remain based in Italy, and the company will continue to further the development of its popular Nice EnginFrame and Desktop Cloud Visualization (DCV) products. The only real difference is that Nice can now draw upon the expertise of AWS’ engineers, Barr said. However, he did say that in future Nice and AWS will look to collaborate on new products in the HPC and virtualization areas.

“The entire team will be with us to open this new chapter of our history”, said Beppe Ugolotti CEO at Nice. “Everybody is already dreaming about all the new technologies we will be able to develop working together with our future colleagues at AWS.”

If you’re unfamiliar with Nice, the Italian firm describes itself as a developer of “grid and cloud Solutions, and specializes in grid and high performance computing (HPC), and technical computing portals. It offers services including application grid-enablement, data exchange, remote visualization, grid intelligence, collaboration and more.

Nice’s flagship product is its EnginFrame grid computing portal that makes it easier to submit analysis jobs to supercomputers and monitor the results. The product is an open framework built on Java XML and Web Services, and its main purpose is to help users create application and data-oriented portals that are simple to use, meaning less-skilled workers can also enjoy the benefits of HPC. EnginFrame can also be used to monitor workloads, data and licenses from a single dashboard.

Nice’s other main product is its Desktop Cloud Visualization software, which it describes as “3D visualization technology” that allows users to connect to Direct/X and OpenGL applications hosted in a data center.

Both products sound like a decent piece of kit, and it seems Nice’s customers feel the same way, for its picked up a long list of well-known enterprise users, including Airbus, Audi, Bridgestone, CERN, Chevron, Ericsso, Ferrari, Harvard Business School, Lear, Magellan Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, Red Bull, Siemens and Yale University, to name just a few.

Of course, this means AWS now counts these enterprises as customers of its own, if they weren’t already. No doubt they’ll continue using Nice’s products, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if those same customers later decided to deploy their large scale HPC jobs on Amazon’s cloud.

AWS said the deal is set to close at the end of March.

image credit: Comfreak via pixabay