Kalwani conducted a four-hour tutorial here at the annual International Conference on High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, or SC06, with an eye toward giving HPC managers an overview of IT management basics. Among the topics covered were ROI, service-level agreements and portfolio management, with some homespun advice about what to expect from IT managers.

"They want the lowest-cost solution, and that's a battle that you find starting from Day One," Kalwani said to a class of about 60 people at the conference.

IT managers may also have trouble understanding some of the goals of people who use powerful and complex systems for research, said Kalwani. "IT, surprisingly -- despite the 'T' in IT -- are not technical. They're almost bureaucratic, so you've got to watch out for that," he warned.

After his tutorial, Kalwani also said that HPC users have to adapt. "HPC, now that's it has become mainstream, [should] also start acting like mainstream," said. He went on to say that the benefit of adopting IT processes will be "improved quality, definitely reduced costs and actually more wide acceptance."

Many of the people who attend SC06 live in a different world from mainstream IT. They are largely researchers from academia, government agencies and corporations. Many hold advanced degrees in mathematics, physics, biology and other sciences and use HPC technologies for everything from basic scientific research to business intelligence, product design and visualization.