Sun closes 'future' pay-per-use utility computing service

Not unexpected.

So who was surprised, especially given the economic downturn? But then I always thought Sun was aiming at the wrong target (enterprise customers) with a lot of their rent-a-cloud effort. Their one real differentiator, the one area where Niagara could really shine is webserving, especially for largely static webpages like about 90% of those on the Worldwide Web, so how come it's not cleaning up with the hosting companies? Lack of vision at the top, or lack of delivery further down the order?

Now, every time Sun go into a customer to talk grid or mini-cloud opportunities, they will get slapped by the IBM, Dell and HP salesgrunts with the line "Did you know what happened to the Sun cloud effort - it died because it wasn't fit for the market, and now Sun are trying to sell you the same wrong tech in a smaller package, do you really want that?"

As for hosting Linux on Slowaris - why? As an example, RHEL has built-in Xen and yet many customers still chose to pay for the rock-solid VMware ESX offerings to host RHEL. Why should they go to the added trouble of running another complete OS just for virtualisation just because it's free? And even if they do take the free part, unless they buy a Sun support contract Sun wil make less than zero on the deal. That's not a lack of vision, that's myopic optimism replacing the ability to gauge what the market actually wants.

/Getting beyond the laughing stage.

So what about the poor users?

This is why utility/grid computing isn't going to catch on.

If I happened to choose Sun for my company I am now royally ......ed

It's not a utility service when you have to spend a year reimplementing everything if your power supplier changes power station.

RightScale

Supposedly RightScale could let you abstract the cloud details, to avoid just that. Haven't actually used their stuff but it does look to have potential for that.

Re: www.sun.com/rock is also gone

I'm sure it's only feeding into your FUD, but that page never existed. Why do you insist on spreading this FUD? Probably just more of Matt the HP Sales Grunt spreading FUD under an AC cover.

Working for a company that gets NDA presentations from Sun regularly, as I would expect Matt the HP Sales Grunt would also get if he was really in IT, Rock is alive and well if not a bit late.

Re: Not unexpected.

OK, now this is really upsetting me having to agree with Matt the HP Sales Grunt. As far as Sun going after the wrong market in this case, I 100% agree... By going after the enterprise market Sun was aimed right into IBM's wheel house. Sun was one of the first major vendor with a "Cloud" computing solution like this, so I give them a little bit of wiggle room here, but they really missed the boat.

Sun's stated goal has been to go after the "Web 2.0" companies, so they then target Enterprise Companies with their hosting solution. It makes no sense. I don't think it's too late to come up with a solution and re-enter the market, but with Sun's recently announced "downsizing" I doubt they will want to go too hard charging into a market that has already denied them.

Are you not Biased

is it the network.com page was changed after you wrote the article or there is something wrong with my reading .

The page says in transition and they are adding some new features .

i wonder how you are reporting SUN is closing the service.

there are lot of people like me depend on theregister for valuable info and bad reporting or a biased reporting is not good you will loose your market .

D L

SUN don't shine

This idea never had legs. Sun has been irrelevant for a long time. Before Schwarz, Mc Nealy was another behemoth on a downhill run. Since Andy B took initial leave the lifeblood has been draining from that business. They got lucky many years ago and have traded on that.

To hell with them

Purple sun

Meh, doesn't matter

Amazon's EC2 service is the greatest thing ever.

Really! Go try it. It costs fuck all and you can build a full beowulf cluster in about 6 mnutes.