Sun Grid Gets Thumbs Up

Sun Microsystems Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) has added flesh to the bones of its much-hyped grid computing initiative (see Sun Grid Goes Live and Sun Unlocks Grid for $1). Is it enough to tempt users?

Suns grid utility service, which offers access to compute resources at a cost of $1 per CPU per hour, was first unveiled last year. Now, though, the company has added storage to the mix, at a cost of $1 per gigabyte per month.

The Holy Grail for Sun, at least as far as grid computing is concerned, is the financial sector. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based firm is keen to tap the immense compute and storage demands of Wall Street firms, but it faces stiff competition from rivals IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) and Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ), which have already made inroads into this space (see IBM Opens 3rd Supercomputing Center, IBM Intros Grid Offering, and HP Delivers Storage Grid Solution).

However, NDCF spoke to a number of IT directors from the financial sector at today’s Web Services on Wall Street conference in New York, and it seems that Sun may be onto a winner with its clearly defined pay-per-use pricing.

”There is a market for the Sun grid strategy,” said one IT director at an investment bank, speaking to NDCF on condition of anonymity. It could be particularly relevant for areas such as mortgage analysis and credit derivatives where calculations need to be done in a timely manner, he added.Another IT director from an insurance company, who also asked not to be named, told NDCF that he is planning to take a closer look at the Sun Grid. The strategy offers a much clearer return on investment than allocating his own high-end servers and storage to specific applications, according to the exec.

”CTOs and CIOs for a long time have been investing in these rocket ships, but they are tethered to the post,” he said. “This is their chance to only spend the money they need to.”

However, he added that he would like to see more information from Sun on how customers can actually monitor their applications on the hardware giant’s grid.

So, what level of interest is Sun getting? NDCF nabbed Sun exec Hal Jespersen (or, to give him his fancy title, Distinguished Engineer) at the New York event. “Every single major trading firm in New York and the U.K. has talked to us,” he assured us.

Although he was unwilling to name names, Jespersen confirmed that Sun is currently running a grid pilot with a major U.K. firm based on 3,000 CPUs, which is scheduled to grow to more than 10,000 CPUs.Over in the U.S., he added, a 15,000-CPU pilot is also underway with a “big Wall Street trading firm,” based at Sun’s New Jersey data center.

Sun clearly has high hopes for its grid strategy. Although the initial announcements have focused on core data center technologies such as servers and storage, the firm is planning to roll out a grid offering for the desktop over the next few months.

The company has also announced major deals with Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) and Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) (NYSE: CSC) to support its own back-end systems (see Sun, EDS Extend Partnership and CSC Signs $360M Deal With Sun).

— James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-Gen Data Center Forum