Simon’s Blog

Today, we’ve had the first glimpse into Sun’s future plans for cloud computing, which will be based around the brand new OpenSolaris OS (just released today, after being in preview for some time).  You may, or may not, know that Sun already has a cloud computing offering, called Network.com.  So far, this has been focused on executing batch parallel computing jobs on a pay-as-you-go basis.  That’s fine, for what it is.  However, batch computing jobs are a small niche compared to running a “complete” pay-as-you-go cloud computing offering, with scalable clusters of web servers, middleware servers, database servers, and scalable reliable back-end storage etc.  That is, an offering that would let you get up and running building the next Google, Facebook or YouTube…. all with no upfront investment in hardware required.   So, what are Sun’s future plans for cloud computing?

For sure, I think Sun is going to re-invent Network.com in the future… but not today.  Today, Sun announced the kind of complete offering I described above; not as its own offering on Network.com, but by partnering with Amazon to deliver OpenSolaris as an optional operating system on Amazon’s super-popular Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazone EC2). It goes into private (by invitation) beta today.

Amazon EC2 (combined with Amazon S3 storage) is an interesting option (perhaps the best option currently around) for people and companies deploying systems that they hope and expect to enjoy rapid growth.   Choosing OpenSolaris as the OS on EC2 will be a no-cost option.

This is an intriguing move on Sun’s part, and one that begs the question… “What’s next for Network.com?”