$1 per CPU hour service to go live at last
Sun Microsystems will officially unveil its $1 per CPU hour grid later this week, the company's president Jonathan Schwartz said on his blog.
But the service will initially be limited to the US and is expected to hold less capacity than initially promised.
Sun officially first unveiled its grid in February 2005. The service was designed to provide enterprises access to computing power in a similar way to how they purchase electricity. The offering targeted compute intensive tasks such as rendering animations or running a financial model or analysis.
The server vendor later delayed the roll out, claiming that large clients were soaking up all the capacity. This didn't leave any space for the so-called retail offering, where anybody would be able to purchase computing power in at $1 per CPU hour from a special website.
Industry analyst Gordon Haff with Illuminata at the time said that the company needed additional time to sort out security issues. The service for instance required changes to prevent that it would be used to send spam or launch denial of service attacks.
In his blog posting, Schwartz blamed the delay on a reluctance with enterprises to put their trust in grid system. Instead they preferred the traditional outsourcing model where a provider comes in and takes over the management and maintenance of a datacentre.
"But that'd be like an electricity company collecting generators and unique power requirements, and trying to build a grid out of them," he quipped.
Building the Sun grid also proved to be more complex than initially thought, Schwartz noted. Most of today's grids are build for specific applications such as data analysis, powering online search engines or video rendering. Sun's general purpose grid required a different approach.
A security audit raise an additonal number of problems that required repairing. And the US government wanted to make sure that the service would adhere to export controls that keep certain technologies out of reach for several rogue nations.
The export controls will initially limit the grid to the US, but Sun still plans to make the service available globally, Schwartz promised. Applicants registering for an account will also be screened before they are granted access.
Once the service is live, users will be able to sign up and access their accounts through the network.com website.
Sun Microsystems will officially unveil its $1 per CPU hour grid later this week, the company's president Jonathan Schwartz said on his blog.
But the service will initially be limited to the US and is expected to hold less capacity than initially promised.
Sun officially first unveiled its grid in February 2005. The service was designed to provide enterprises access to computing power in a similar way to how they purchase electricity. The offering targeted compute intensive tasks such as rendering animations or running a financial model or analysis.
The server vendor later delayed the roll out, claiming that large clients were soaking up all the capacity. This didn't leave any space for the so-called retail offering, where anybody would be able to purchase computing power in at $1 per CPU hour from a special website.
Industry analyst Gordon Haff with Illuminata at the time said that the company needed additional time to sort out security issues. The service for instance required changes to prevent that it would be used to send spam or launch denial of service attacks.
In his blog posting, Schwartz blamed the delay on a reluctance with enterprises to put their trust in grid system. Instead they preferred the traditional outsourcing model where a provider comes in and takes over the management and maintenance of a datacentre.
"But that'd be like an electricity company collecting generators and unique power requirements, and trying to build a grid out of them," he quipped.
Building the Sun grid also proved to be more complex than initially thought, Schwartz noted. Most of today's grids are build for specific applications such as data analysis, powering online search engines or video rendering. Sun's general purpose grid required a different approach.
A security audit raise an additonal number of problems that required repairing. And the US government wanted to make sure that the service would adhere to export controls that keep certain technologies out of reach for several rogue nations.
The export controls will initially limit the grid to the US, but Sun still plans to make the service available globally, Schwartz promised. Applicants registering for an account will also be screened before they are granted access.
Once the service is live, users will be able to sign up and access their accounts through the network.com website.
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