 |
|
DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
|
Special Features:
SUN'S HPTC MARKETING MGR DISCUSSES
COMMERCIAL GRIDS
by Derrick Harris, Editor
GRIDtoday recently interviewed Peter ffoulkes, group manager of HPTC
marketing
at Sun Microsystems, about Sun's role in the enterprise Grid computing market
and what effects the Enterprise Grid Alliance will have, among other
topics.
GRIDtoday: What is Sun's place in enterprise Grid computing?
PETER FFOULKES: Sun is leading the charge for Grid computing to leap the
gap
from the technical enterprise to commercial enterprise computing.
Since the introduction of Sun N1 Grid Engine in September 2000 that reset
the
economics of commercial grade Grid products, Sun's contributions have
continued to drive the development, acceptance and deployment of Grid
technologies spanning open source contributions, participation in standards
initiatives, to industry leading products and partnerships that are focused on
advancing Grid technology in the enterprise.
Since 2000 sun has established itself as a leading vendor of Grid computing
with thousands of sun-powered Grids worldwide utilizing Sun Grid Engine
software. Sun Grid Engine, Enterprise Edition, introduced in the summer of
2002, enabled Sun's customer base to implement a policy-based Grid
infrastructure which is required for enterprise level Grids.
Building on its modular building blocks, Grid engine, N1, Java Web Services
and partnerships, Sun is focusing on extending its Grid Data Center Reference
Architectures to focus on the needs of commercial enterprise customers.
Gt: How does Sun see Grid computing affecting enterprises?
PF: Our vision for Grid computing extends the benefits that are firmly
established in the technical enterprise today moving beyond the numerically
intensive long running batch oriented workloads to including transactional and
large database workloads that are typical in commercial enterprise computing.
The technology foundation builds on our existing Grid and N1 technologies to
deliver a virtualized resource infrastructure with Java Web Services providing
the foundation for workload service delivery. As these technologies and
related standards are developed, the opportunity to implement utility
computing business models will become achievable, ultimately enabling the Grid
to become a commodity exchange for compute capacity and data access both
inside and beyond organizational boundaries.
Gt: What industries, aside from automotive, oil and aerospace, stand to
benefit from Grid computing, and when will we see the transition to Grid take
place in those areas?
PF: Grid is already firmly established as the dominant deployment paradigm
for
numerically intensive workload across the scientific and product technical
computing industry.
Beyond discrete manufacturing in automotive, aerospace, and electronics or
oil
and gas Grid is used extensively in life sciences, digital media, and other
research disciplines. We expect the financial services industry to play a
leading role in the leap across from technical to commercial enterprise
computing. These companies already use Grid for modeling and risk analysis,
understanding the benefits and possessing the expertise. The ability of Grid
to enable the rapid delivery of new services in the dynamic and highly
competitive world of global finance is extremely attractive.
Gt: What is the timeframe for the Enterprise Grid Alliance, of which Sun is a
member, to have a noticeable impact?
PF: Sun is an active participant across the board in organizations that are
driving the development of Grid standards, specifications, and technologies
such as the Global Grid Forum and Globus.
Sun was also among the first companies to join the recently announced
Enterprise Grid Alliance because of its specific focus on the needs of
commercial Grid computing. The growing list of companies joining the alliance
has already created an impact in the Grid community. The alliance is currently
establishing its initial working groups each of which are defining their scope
of activity and timeframes for deliverables. Several of the EGA participant
companies are present at Gt'04.
Gt: How does the absence of Microsoft and IBM affect the EGA? Do you foresee
either company joining within the near future?
PF: The EGA encourages participation from the entire Grid community, large
and
small companies as well as end users. The EGA is actively engaging in
conversation with many companies including Microsoft and IBM, but each needs
to decide whether and when to participate in EGA activities according to their
own priorities.
We expect more companies to join EGA as they gain a clearer understanding
of
the EGA's activities as details are announced over the coming months, but we
can't comment for other organizations.
Gt: What kind of effects will conferences and trade shows, such as Gt'04 have
on the adoption of Grid computing in the commercial setting?
PF: A forum that brings together a community of customers and vendors with
a
common interest can only facilitate a better understanding. Especially when in
the early stages of a market that communication can help vendors prioritize
their development and make users aware of what is possible and what still
needs to be developed, stimulating demand and opportunity.
Gt: What changes should be made to the current enterprise Grid computing
strategy, and why?
PF: To accelerate the deployment of Grid in commercial enterprise computing
we
need to have support for transactional workloads, an infrastructure that meets
the robust availability and security requirements expected in enterprise class
datacenters and improvements in the provisioning and Web services technologies
required to virtualize the infrastructure.
Most of all we need open, royalty free standards and specifications that
enable enterprise application solution vendors to deliver Grid and Web service
enabled applications that can interoperate across the entire enterprise.
Customers need to be sure that they can build an infrastructure that meets
their business needs without implementing large amounts of proprietary code
that inhibits flexibility or requires a large investment in custom development
and professional services.
This is sun's strategy, and why we participate in organizations like the
EGA
that are focused on meeting the needs of the global enterprise customer.
Gt: What practices have been the most successful?
PF: By focusing on Grid as an operational concept rather than a collection
of
products, we can work with our customers to understand their information
supply chain and workflow needs. When we understand what they do and how they
wish to do it we can then map that to the underlying infrastructure to provide
data access, computational capabilities, and the visual representation needed
to support the needs of the people in the business whatever they need to be
successful and wherever they are located.
Sun's approach is based on strategy that uses modular Grid enabled building
blocks and reference architectures as the most efficient way to tailor Grids
to the specific and individual needs of each our customers. This approach
provides an array of expertise, products, technologies, alliances, and
services that together provide the flexibility and choice our customers need
to do business in their preferred manner.
|