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Lights On But No One Home At Sun Grid
cygnusx writes "The Register reveals that Sun's pay-for-use grid computing services hasn't picked up a single customer yet." From the article: "The missing customers prove quite shocking when you consider that utility computing users must agree to be named in marketing programs as part of their contract with Sun - a fact learned by The Register and confirmed by a Sun spokeswoman. More than one year since it first started hyping the 'pay-for-use grid computing services' Sun is still weeks away from presenting a customer to the public. The program has proved much tougher to sell that Sun ever imagined."
You don't embark on a large project of ANY kind without at least securing a customer or two during the development process.
Unless of course you're doing something with free software like Bittorrent where you don't need to money and everything else is cost neglible.
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Does this mean that the only reason why someone would want such computing power is because they want to run projects they wouldn't want the public to know about?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
An important question is whether this is a failure of marketing or a poor choice of target market. If the target market exists but is not using it, then you might be able to consider it a failure of marketing: There is demand and supply, but the demand is not aware of the supply. If the target market does not exist, then Sun has obviously chosen to go into an area which is not a worthwhile venture, at least at the present time.
Though, it's possible that the target market hasn't been formed yet and Sun is going for the "If you build it, they will come"; i.e. by creating the possibility they will generate demand for it in the future.
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... that I (as an EA) don't really understand the proposition and what I can do with it. Sure I've read the blurb, I've even been to Menlo Park and had the presentation, but the question I want to answer is *what* of all my core apps I'm going to run on it. Do I get to go to Oracle grid on this stuff? Can I run all my core back office apps on it? What do I pay on top of the $1/cpu/hr? Bandwidth back to head office?
On top of all that, it's clear that I'm not going to abandon our existing investment in Sun hardware to take immediate advantage of this while that hardware still has a leasing life of 2-3 years. Sure I'm interested, it doesn't particularly benefit the company to have a stack of office space devoted to a computer room, and it's harder still when the business grows fast and we constantly need more gear. But Sun aren't in my face about this stuff, aren't giving me the numbers I need to take it to the CIO. When they do, then I'll think about it.
On the other hand, Sun are to be congratulated on their other initiatives in this kind of pricing model. To an enterprise with small numbers of staff but high revenue, their per FTE/yr software licensing on Java Enterprise System et al is a wonderful model which many other vendors will have to catch up with as we move to multi-core CPU's as standard. For us, the other J2EE vendors just can't compete on price (FOSS excluded of course).
Utility computing is coming, let's face it - but mainly it's a question of education of the masses, and time to get through hardware replacement cycles. Of course I'm a bit surprised that there's NO customers yet, but that still doesn't mean there won't be, ever.
I'm currently using our university student lab. But this is a mix of various machines, from 300MHz Sun Ultra 60 to 900 MHz SunFire machines, some of them limited in memory, and all used by students for their own nefarious purposes (e.g. pr0n and Quake). I'd love to be able to set 100 or so identical processors to the job. I could keep them fed for months. But at $1/CPU-hour, a day on 100 machines is $2400. I can buy 6 low-end Athlon machines for that money (and they will be just as good for the job). Yes, I do save in electricity and administration, but these costs are a) low for my application and b) come out of other budgets. For scientific work, SUN's prices are not acceptable. I would be tempted at a price of 1ct/CPU-hour. I would immediately buy into the thing for 0.1ct/CPU-hour with low-priority (i.e. I get to use only otherwise free processors).
Stephan
Great. Now you need to buy a bunch of racks and equipment to connect those 350 machines togeather. Make that 350+, with that many going, your likely to experience some hardware failures. Your getting to be close personal friends with the bean counter. It's not cheaper, but it's gotta be cheaper than Sun.
Now we're cooking with gas. Now you you just need to hire someone who knows what the hell they are doing to hook them up in a workable cluster, tweak the hell out of it to get anywhere decent performance... hmm. Gotta either hire a body or contract out. HR won't want a body for short term. Ah well, better hire the expensive contractor since this is all going to close down in a month. Hey Mr. Beancounter, I need a contractor that's worked with big clusters before to spend some time here. Ouch, one who is really good, available, and will do it well and quickly is not gonna be cheap. $$$. Oh, and hope they don't botch the job so that it takes hiring another contractor (and more time) to do it right...
Ahh, finally. We've cranked through the job. Excellent Now we just have to go back to our friend Mr Beancounter and have him put 350+ odd machines on Ebay for us, plus the racks, switches, cables. Oh, and the big AC units... hmm, some of this might take quite a bit of time to sell to start recouping the money. Ah well, our beancounter wasn't going to be doing much else for the next few months. Or won't be now anyhow. Oh, plus we need to have someone tear down and box everything up. Probably for shipping to 1000 different places. Hmm, and the HVAC guys will have to come uninstall the extra AC units. But in a few months I'm sure we'll have back part of the costs of those machines!
A bit of a hassle, no? A big expense. You might, just might come out cheaper than if you went with Sun. Then again, you could just cut a check to Sun, know the job will go into their queue, and you will probably have your data back from them in a few days.
Sometimes it's just easier to pay someone who does that stuff for a living.