Sun Microsystems will offer utility computing services
priced at less than a dollar per node an hour.
The company will aim the services at applications tolerant of
high latency between processors, such as simulations, modelling and
rendering, all easily optimised for grid computing, it said. It
will make thousands of processors in Sun Fire servers available for
the services.
The first service called Compute@Sun, will cost 79 cents per
processor an hour in the US, while the second, Sun Utility
Computing for Grid, will cost 99 an hour for a dual processor node.
Sun did not say when the services will be available.
In the future, Sun expects businesses to buy computing capacity in
much the same way they buy mobile phone services today, paying for
a service plan allowing a number of hours of calls - or
calculations - a month.
It will also sell compute-minutes wholesale to service provider
partners, who will then resell the processor time to their
customers. The partners include Atos Origin, Electronic Data
Systems and CGI Group.
The company also announced a utility pricing model for midrange
storage services based on its StorEdge 6920 system. At 80 cents per
Sun Power Unit, takes into account a range of features and
functionality, and will vary depending on the hardware, software
and services used.
Peter Sayer writes for IDG News Service