Parabon Computation, Inc. is a grid and cloud computing software company with considerable experience in creating computing solutions to solve data-heavy and compute-intensive problems. The firm's flagship product is the Frontier Compute Platform - which was among the very first commercially available grid solution in the marketplace - providing private grids management, host computer's excess capacity harnessing, and browser-based access to Grid software as a service (SaaS) applications. Parabon's online, brokered computation service is among the longest, continuously operating online computation service in the marketplace. Two particularly interesting uses of the firm's capability have implication far beyond those of Parabons primary business focus. Parabon Computation has established the Compute Against Alzheimer's Disease (CAAD) research initiative designd to accelerate investigations into the causes and risks of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) through the application of large-scale computational capacity donated by concerned citizens and organizations. AD is a leading cause of death and dementia among the elderly, affecting nearly 40 million people worldwide. In addition to its devastating effect on patients and its emotional toll on their families, the societal costs of AD are estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, yet there are no effective treatment options available today. The CAAD software infrastructure, which is powered by idle, otherwise wasted computing capacity of potentially thousands of computers â ranging in power from laptops to Linux clusters â allows the Parabon to become a vital platform for computationally intensive AD research. By downloading and installing a small, unobtrusive software application that, like a screensaver, operates only when a computer is not otherwise in use, volunteer providers can offer up the idle capacity from their computers to support the CAAD effort. The crowdsourcing of such spare capacity from computers around the globe will enable important AD research questions to be addressed that would otherwise be prohibitively time consuming. Individuals who wish to support the CAAD program can download the application and learn more about the research initiative by visiting ComputeAgainstAlzheimers.o
