Comments on: Sun lures partners to Grid for launch

On-demand service gets endorsement from Oracle. But don't use it for weapons of mass destruction.

[SqlserverCode]

$5000 per hour?/

>> Sun has 5,000 processors on hand

so they can make only $5000 per hour if all the processors are used
I don't know about this, how many people do they need to support this?

http://otherthingsnow.blogspot.com/

[Flytrap]

Try over $5 million/hr

Both the Optetron and Sparc boast superior branch prediction and thread management, allowing each processor to be able to handle multiple tasks within each hour.

[scdecade]

Wha?

Why would you care how many people Sun needs to support this? Do you turn down free (or discount) introductory offers because you prefer to pay extra?

Sun is definitely, definitely, abso-f'ing-lutely positively onto something here. Right now they're only working with java binaries and executables. When they offer an instance of postgres, a file system (zfs), variable storage service levels, and a data recovery SLA... And that's just the start... Sun OWNS all the pieces. Well, what do you think this will do to the IT industry? It's not hard to image. It has to start somewhere.

And this model will drive CPU usage over the moon. 5,000 is not even a drop in the bucket.

[hutchike]

IBM, the word is "commoditize" not "trivialize"

I'm sure Sun has duly considered liability, confidentiality and security implications while thoroughly testing the grid over the past 2 years. The fact that IBM, HP, Microsoft and others completely missed this obvious market opportunity gives Sun a huge lead in commoditized computing as a service. It seems the only companies that really *get* the network are Amazon (S3 storage), Google (search APIs), Salesforce.com and Sun.

As Jonathan Schwartz notes in his blog "most enterprises today define On Demand computing as hosting - they want to give their computers, software, networking and storage to a third party, and rent them back". He goes on to say "That's not a business we're in (nor one in which technology plays much of a role - it's all about managing real estate and call centers, as far as we can tell). Grids are all about standardization and transparency". Maybe IBM will never get it?

[scdecade]

IBM is out of touch

Yeah, IBM aren't trying to be ahead of the curve eliminating capricious IT complexity. Complexity is their friend. From the IBM x86 lady that thinks IBM's X3 chipset more than makes up for AMD's blatant microarchitecture superiority (lower power, less heat, less space, fewer components) to the clown quoted here, IBM seems to just want to bilk $$$ by trading in complexity. In the short run they undoubtedly have the profit maximizing strategy. But they are vulnerable and are becoming more so by the day. The most worrisome part is that they're offering obviously false FUD to people who can recognize it. Yet they do it anyway and their future strategy seems to depend on it being right.