SUN wants to take the public computing revolution and play with commercial gimmicks?

Since the birth of the computer, it has undergone a revolutionary transformation from a giant computer to a PC. Today, it has become the most effective assistant for people in daily work and home entertainment, but if someone tells you that you can order computing services as conveniently as using gas and electricity, will you believe it? Sun's CEO, Jonathan schouaz, once said that it was a commercial stunt to get the company's large amount of computing resources to eBay for auction?

Is Jonathan schwaz crazy? People have to ask. As the President and CEO of Sun Microsystems, his words cannot help but attract people's attention. He expressed his desire to sell the company's high-end computing resources as commodities. He said he owns a secret weapon in the increasingly fierce price war-the world-renowned auction site eBay.

Sun will launch the N1 Grid Service by the end of the year. Customers can purchase the computing services they need on an hourly basis, the price is USD 1 hour for each user to use a processor. The customer only needs a credit card and a web browser to complete the transaction. "Users do not need to sign long-term contracts, and such services are still unique at present," Sun's public Computing Department Manager asvecheanani proudly boasted ."

Is it a gimmick or take it seriously?

It sounds a little strange to rent out a computing service on an ebay website just like renting an ordinary product, but for the head of shuwaz with his hair tied to a horse tail, he is a maverick and personalized Zhang Yang, this seems to be due to his typical thinking. After all, he promised the Board that Sun's revenue would repeat during the year after filling in the position of President in August, when sun had fallen for three consecutive years. Indeed, after taking office, Sun experienced two consecutive quarters of growth.

The new Public computing service is very attractive to most users who want to save costs, for example, the Risk Simulation Analysis of large investment banks requires additional computing needs, and emerging biopharmaceutical companies that are unable to purchase supercomputer for drug design.

Sun will first launch a new service on the company's website, but the final plan is to use ebay as a trading platform, and the price may be lower than the previous one-hour USD per processor.

In the end, is it a smoke screen drama directed by shuwaz, or is it a real change in the center of gravity of the computing service industry? Sun insists that this is a careful choice, but many analysts still have doubts. In the past, giant computer sales brought huge profits to Sun, and the launch of Public computing services seems to have a negative impact on the profit sector. However, swwasz seems to have made up his mind. He said technological advances have turned public computing services into a reality. Sun has also begun to sell a large number of low-end servers. Analysts believe this will bring disaster to all Sun's businesses. Swwasz insisted that the customer was ready, and said, "This is no longer a technical issue, but a cultural issue ." To get a low-cost public computing service, technical managers prefer to give up control of some data.

If Sun's entire computing service plan can be implemented on schedule, the public computing concept in the initial stage will truly change to the low-cost service field, people can trade their computers with idle CPUs like corn and oil. In fact, this is a natural evolution of the computing industry. Even if schwaz's wish cannot be fully fulfilled, analysts believe that eventually someone will come to realize it.

A waste of computing resources

In the future, we will enter an on-demand service era. Every user will be charged based on the accepted quantitative service. The entire system is automated and bundled on a basic architecture, as Rob Enderle, president of the Enderle Group at the technical consultancy, said, "the services the user accepts will be charged in US (s) or smaller currency units."

The prospect of Sun's computing service is obvious because the cost of computer hardware and software, coupled with the cost of maintenance, is a huge expense. After buying the device, the device remains idle for many times, consuming a lot of energy.

According to Sun's survey data, taking a company engaged in the research of geological diagrams of oilfield Formation and Development as an example, the utilization rate of its software and hardware resources is between 30% and 60% in most cases, other 30%-40% are wasted because they are idle. You can imagine how huge the cost will be. Many companies want to work with Sun to improve the efficiency of device operation while also leasing a large number of idle resources to the market.

Sun allows users to upload their software to one of Sun's two grid computing devices Consisting of 1000 CPUs. The two systems are equivalent to the two supercomputers that command all the CPUs to complete the same task, this system supports all software running on the Solaris operating system developed by Sun and other Linux open source operating systems of various versions. After the entire system completes the task, Sun erased all records related to the user's software and data.

What is the difference between this first-hand service and other computing services on the market? Currently, most public computing services have been contracted for more than one year, or even five years. IBM has signed many years of computing service contracts with financial service giant American Express, TELECOM Public Qwest, and European financial service company Nordea, however, in addition to the quantitative charges for computing resources used, these contracts also incur a large amount of daily maintenance costs. The obvious difference is that users can directly purchase Sun's computing services online without having to come up with complicated use agreements or bargain. The service is very attractive to small companies with limited but relatively complex financial resources. Even large companies are interested in the service. They only need to pay for the services they accept, which saves a lot of idle and wasted computing resources.

Ongoing huge trials

Sun has already provided some potential customers with a complete experience of the computing service system, allowing them to feel for themselves whether it is the promise made by shuvas. Asvf Dhanani, manager of the Public Computing Department, said he had received a large number of requests to participate in the attempt, but he refused to provide a list of companies that demanded the request.

Dhanani also admitted that the "N1 Grid Service" was a huge experiment, and a dollar per CPU per hour sounds funny. There are already a large number of test users, but Sun does not want to disclose the details of these customers.

Mcneili and its company are also facing severe challenges from IBM and HP. Andrew Efstathiou, an analyst at the Yangji group, a market research agency in Boston, believes that Sun's computing service may also have a negative impact on its server business, not to attract new customers.

IBM executives do not care about Sun's computing services. Jim Corgel, general manager of IBM's Global Service Department, said, "When no customer calls, they say, 'I need an hour of computing service,' and they will say, 'I want to achieve this purpose, what do you think... '"Corgel said that IBM has also launched a similar package of online computing services, allowing users to have more room for maneuver. They can use this service to complete any computing service, do not worry about the number of processors or the time spent.

It is indeed a novel idea to get the computing time to eBay for sale. If shuwaz makes his computing rental service as convenient as the music download service, then he naturally does not have to worry about it, A large number of customers will certainly buy their tickets.

Source: http://news.chinabyte.com/homepage/