Sun to unveil new grid group, products

Robert McMillan   Today’s Top Stories   or  Other Grid and Utility Computing Stories  

Dynamic Data Center and Virtualization Drives Operational Excellence at Emory Healthcare Windows Vista® Migration: What Really Happens? A Customer's Perspective Real-time collaboration and development with IBM Rational Team Concert streamlines any project The Total Economic Impact of the Altiris Total Management Suite Software Securing and Managing the Endpoints: The Case for Convergence An Overview of PAN Manager by Egenera SaaS Solutions for Remote Systems Management Compterworld Technology Briefing: Intelligent Users Use Business Intelligence Computerworld Report- Large Enterprises Pay More for IPAM Sign up to receive Grid and Utility Computing Resource Alerts

January 28, 2005 (IDG News Service) -- Sun Microsystems Inc. has formed a new business unit chartered with developing a line of grid computing products that the company plans to unveil at an event Tuesday at its Santa Clara, Calif., headquarters.
The unit has been quietly working since late 2004 to develop a new line of grid-based services. The first of these products, expected to be unveiled next week, will include a new storage grid product as well as an expanded version of the company's N1 Pay-Per-Use Grid Computing service. Sun plans to begin offering the service on a widespread commercial basis.
The new group is headed by Robert Youngjohns, who already serves as executive vice president of strategic development and Sun financing. The unit, also referred to as the utility computing group, was formed several months ago, but next week's announcements will mark its public unveiling, according to Sun.
Over the past several years, a number of industry vendors have embraced the idea of grid computing. Loosely defined as technology that lets computers share resources, grid has been used to describe everything from high-performance computing clusters to distributed computing projects like the University of California's SETI@Home to an emerging set of open standards that allows computing power to be provided on an as-needed basis, much like electricity or water.
Sun has already dabbled in the grid computing world. It sells distributed computing software called the N1 Grid Engine, which allows computers to share processing resources. Since October, it has been working with partners like Electronic Data Systems Corp. and CGI Group Inc. to provide resources such as a service for customers who require extremely large amounts of high-performance computing power.
And last year, Sun unveiled its Pay-Per-Use service, which it billed as a convenient way for customers to purchase extra compute cycles for as little as $1 per CPU per hour.
Sun initially offered a free trial of Pay-Per-Use but was forced to "take the trial site down fairly quickly because we had to go to commercial [deployments]," said Aisling MacRunnels, senior director of utility computing at Sun. Next week, Sun will announce plans to include storage services as well as an enhanced version of the Pay-Per-Use plan, she said.
Though she declined to reveal specifics, MacRunnels said Sun had already invested a large amount of capital in building the six regional centers that will support Sun's grid services. "This is a new definition of grid. A much broader definition of grid," she said. "We have turned a labs-type thing, with a playground grid, into something that is very commercially scalable."
Sun's utility computing efforts are part of a companywide effort to simplify the way its

Continued...
1 | 2 | NEXT  

Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2008 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

Print this Story

Send Us Feedback

E-mail this Story

Digg this Story

Slashdot this Story

"It's easy to set up or buy your own Linux desktop, but it's much harder to set up hundreds of..." Read more... "Ordering people to use Linux, at $725 U.S. a crack, is no way to make Linux popular..." Read more... Read more Servers & Data Center posts or See all Blogs

Windows users indifferent to Microsoft patch alarm, says researcher Tech jobs down sharply but not out Apple yanks antivirus advice from its Web site More top stories...

Microsoft slates 8 bug updates for year's final Patch Tuesday De Beers tries to force spoof news Web site offline over fake ad Microsoft confirms Yahoo's Lu to run online services

Review: The new MacBook Air, now with extra SSD goodness Thin as ever, the latest Air offers up to twice the storage and snappy performance. Cool Stuff: Your 2008 Holiday Gift Guide We've got an array of economical, expensive, and just plain weird tech gifts for your friends and family. Massive botnet returns from the dead, starts spamming The spam-spewing 'Srizbi' botnet that was shut down two weeks ago has been resurrected and is again under criminal control, say security researchers. Elgan: Why you can't trust 'friends' on Facebook Facebook is popular and growing -- especially with criminals. Here's why they love it. Windows 7 Get the latest news, reviews and more about Microsoft's newest desktop operating system More Continuing Coverage Windows 7 Voting Technology Google's Chrome browser Economy in turmoil: Latest news and tips iPhone 3G Bill Gates moves on Windows Vista A to Z Mac A to Z 2008 Salary Survey Find wage data for 50 IT job titles. More Special Reports 2008 Premier 100 IT Leaders 2007 Premier 100 IT Leaders 2008 Best Places to Work in IT 2007 Best Places to Work in IT 2008 Salary Survey 2007 Salary Survey 2006 Salary Survey 2008 IT Forecast 2007 IT Forecast 40 Years of Computerworld Top 12 Green-IT Users The FAQs About Going Green IT Schools to Watch iPhone: One Year Later Global Mobile Your Next Data Center Management: Reinventing IT Stop Data Leaks Web 2.0 Security Surviving Disasters Managing Storage Virtualization The Lean Storage Machine Storage on Trial Can Web 2.0 Save BI? Bypass These BI Potholes All Zones Business Continuity Zone The File Data Management Zone Security Management Zone The SAS Zone Business Intelligence and Analytics Zone The Enterprise Search Zone Software as a Service Zone The Security Zone See your link here

Grid Computing Grid computing has emerged on the IT scene amidst hype and confusion. This report provides a "Grid 101" introduction that clarifies the terminology and possibilities. Download this executive briefing  Virtualization Everywhere Download this white paper, free, compliments of Citrix. (Source: Citrix) Adoption of virtualization is concentrated among large enterprises, while adoption by mid-sized companies has been much slower. For these companies, the cost and complexity of server virtualization solutions has been a barrier. In this paper, we'll discuss how Citrix XenServer" provides simple, economical server virtualization for any size company. Download now! Download this white paper  Advances in SSL and Certificate Management Advances in SSL and Certificate Management View this webcast now! Go to the webcast  White Papers Read up on the latest ideas and technologies from companies that sell hardware, software and services. 8 Things You Need to Handle Today's Network Traffic Next-Gen Load Balancing: 3 Keys to Successful Delivery of Advanced Web Apps Building a Reliable and Dynamic Data Center with PAN Manager by Egenera View more whitepapers

• Windows users indifferent to Microsoft patch alarm, says researcher
• Microsoft slates 8 bug updates for year's final Patch Tuesday
• Tech jobs down sharply but not out
• More top stories 

"Turning information into a Competitive Advantage" Companies today are realizing that competitive advantage is harder to sustain when based solely on gains in productivity and cost efficiency. The focus is shifting to invest more in business optimization initiatives which rely on trusted information to develop new insights that deliver better business results. But how can this be done efficiently in a business environment across multiple applications and processes. The answer is an Information Agenda - an innovative approach to transforming business information into a strategic asset for competitive advantage. View this webcast now!  See more Webcasts