A market oriented look at sun grid offerings

Abstract

This study tries to look at the different Grid computing offerings from Sun Microsystems. Sun being a visionary in the grid space has some interesting offerings. Four different types of offerings are looked at - Grid utility computing being one of them. Sun orchestrated a different paradigm in Grid utility computing pricing by offering raw computer power on a retail basis. It offers $1 per-cpu per hour and $1per 1 GB per month pricing model. It's been a successful model in tel IDS of pricing as other major grid vendors like IBM have adopted the same subsequently. The report tries to explore other pricing models and comes up with a few other options for pricing the utility offering. The study looks at the current market in grid computing and does a competitive comparison with IBM. Different strengths and weaknesses of both are compared and contrasted. A summary conclusion is provided on the comparison. Since selling grid computing, requires involvement of partners at different levels. the roles different partners play / may play in making it a successful proposition for Sun. Sun has a history of coming up with great technology, and competitors who use it to build billion-dollar businesses. Grid utility services aren't a unique Sun invention, but the company is challenging the industry to establish commodity markets around computing power. The question is whether Sun can become the preferred infrastructure provider across a wide range of industries in which competition boils down to price per unit of compute power. It's too early to tell, but this is the beginning of what is a trek to infrastructure-as-a-service.