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."

Comments

Re:fp?

[Xaggroth]

yeah ghost town population zero

Pizza Physique?

[Philip K Dickhead]

I am re-absorbing my own mass! Yuk.

Sun seems to have discovered that the statement, "The network is the computer" does not equate to, "Build it and they will come."

Instead think, "The lights are on, but no-one is home."

A little more math, the actual customers...

[nweaver]

The "dedicated" commercial companies are probably paying a lot less.

They are effectively leasing a cluster computer (leasing has tax advantages), and probably their rates are much closer to the real value:

EG, a 2core 2cpu SunFire X4100 is $7500. Lease probably amounts to ~1/3rd of that plus a little extra (lets say $800/cpu-year). Power for the beast is ~600W, so 150W/cpu. At $.20/KWh (includes cooling and reliability), thats ~$250/cpu-year. Lets add $100/cpu-year for the physical location and maintinence, that totals out to $1150/cpu-year.

So Sun probably charges these dedicated customers more like $1150-$1500/cpu-year (perhaps a little more than what they'd pay to build the cluster themselves, but they save hastle factor and having to find space). But this is VASTLY less than sun's retail price charge of $8760/cpu-year.

Sun just wants about 5x what the market rate is for a CPU-year.