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SUN'S NEW GRID GUY ADDRESSES 'FREE' SECURITY
By Derrick Harris, Editor

Bjorn Andersson, Sun's new marketing manager for Grid computing, discusses the future of Grid security and storage, as well as why we might not even be talking about Grid a few years down the road.

GRIDtoday: How long have you been at Sun?

BJORN ANDERSSON: I've been with Sun for almost 17 years, and I've held a wide range of roles and responsibilities during that time. I started out in the field, helping initiate Sun's Swedish subsidiary. That was a great experience, but I really wanted the opportunity to be part of the team defining the first UltraSPARC based product, and I therefore made the decision to move to Sun's corporate headquarters in California. As the product marketing manager for the Ultra 1 workstation, I defined how it was brought to market. I've since had various marketing and strategy roles in groups focused on technical and commercial customer segments. Most recently, I was the head of Marketing Operations for Sun's midrange to high-end enterprise servers. Today, I am Director of Marketing and Executive in Charge for Grid Computing.

Gt: How long have you had the new position?

ANDERSSON: I took on the new role in July this year, so I'm actually still in my first 100 days on the job.

Gt: What are your responsibilities with this position?

ANDERSSON: Basically, I run Grid computing as a business for Sun, focusing on how we take our portfolio of Grid-related products and services to the market. Part of my responsibility is to work very closely with numerous product groups within the company and leverage the extensive expertise and experience that Sun has in Grid Computing. For years, we have used it internally, long before it was even called Grid computing. We have supplied Grid computing technology to thousands of customers around the globe -- more than any other vendor can claim in the market. We have a tremendous pool of expertise to pull from.

Gt: How you are enjoying the new position?

ANDERSSON: In one of my earlier roles as part of the marketing organization for technical computing, I had the opportunity to participate in strategy decisions that led to Sun's entry into the Grid Computing market. It feels great to be "back" in this area again. I also enjoy focusing on the customer, making sure we understand the customer's situation and are able to describe to them the real, tangible business benefits of Grid.

Gt: What factors led you to make the change?

ANDERSSON: Ever since my involvement in Sun's strategic decision to invest in Grid Computing, I've followed developments in this area closely. I believe Grid has now reached the point where it can cross the proverbial chasm and make it as a mainstream technology.

Until recently, Grid has most closely been associated with High Performance and Technical Computing. While it will continue to be a major part of that market, it is now also starting to appear in more traditional commercial application segments. Over the long term, Grid computing will change the face of the data center entirely. In a few years, we probably won't even be talking about Grid computing; it will simply be that ubiquitous. It is very exciting to be part of making that happen.

Gt: From a marketing perspective, how does a relatively new and dynamic field like Grid computing differ from other areas within IT and HPC?

ANDERSSON: Grid is one of the most exciting areas to be in right now, simply because of all the innovation in this space. We're constantly seeing new developments, not only on the technical and product level, but in how we design our systems to excel in a Grid environment, how we provide storage, or how we provide the software solutions to manage that pool of resources.

Recently, Sun has also shown great innovation in the way we do business, particularly in our business models and promotions that enable us to reach out to customers. Sun recently announced a new way of providing compute power through a utility computing concept with an extremely simple pricing model, $1 per CPU, per hour. Sun's "Power by the Hour" scheme can't get much simpler. Now, we realize that not all customers will jump on this right away; some customers will prefer to keep investing in their internal datacenters. However, this promotion enables those customers to have the choice to match the appropriate level and capacity of Sun technology to their diverse technical needs. In fact, it opens the market for us to basically become a broker of CPU cycles, to help customers manage peaks and valleys in their workloads. This is a very different business model with very unique benefits for customers; benefits that go way beyond lower capital expenditures. It lowers the need for data center real estate, makes the business more agile and able to react to changing business conditions. Ultimately, this helps our customers to become more competitive in their industries.

Gt: Grid is clearly prevalent in the scientific community, and is being marketed fairly heavily at enterprises, but it has been suggested that the future of Grid lies in Grid-based storage. What is Sun's plan to address this trend?

ANDERSSON: Grid computing was initially used to solve the need for more compute power, essentially more throughput for number crunching. It wasn't long before the industry realized that this doesn't involve just harvesting and managing CPU cycles. It also involves data. The essential question was, "How does one store the data and how does one keep the Grid fed with data?" Additionally, it involves how Grid resources are accessed and how the result of the computation was extracted and presented. That's usually something more than just a number.

So what we need to do is to take a whole systems approach and look at the need for the particular workload so that we can match the requirements of a set of workloads. This is where Sun has a particular advantage. We are a true systems company, so we own the key intellectual property and control the design of all the important parts that can make up a Grid. In our portfolio we have everything from chips through operating systems to complete systems and storage solutions. Of course, we also have our "secret sauce" that turns this pool of resources into a Grid that basically can be assembled in run time. That is our N1 Grid set of products, including the N1 Grid Engine.

We see storage as an important part of a well functioning Grid and the importance of storage will grow as the size of the data sets continue to grow.

Gt: Do you believe that storage is the future of Grid, or will the increased computing power always be the main selling point of Grid computing?

ANDERSSON: Storage is definitely part of the future of Grid, but it's not the only key to success. We believe it's really about the "systems-ness" of Grid. This also includes how you access the Grid and how you present the results. I like to think that Grid is all about network computing, that it is an instantiation of Sun's long term vision that "The Network is the Computer."

Gt: In any network setting, including networked storage, security is a major concern. How much does security play into the decision-making process for potential customers?

ANDERSSON: This is definitely an area that is becoming increasingly critical for the customer. In today's precarious times, when many users are faced with security-challenged PC environments, it is essential for the core business information of a company to be protected. We have customers using military-grade security on the Solaris OS to build highly secure Grids, enabling them to compartmentalize the information and provide role-based access.

Gt: What steps has Sun taken to address Grid security, and how do you sell customers on this strategy and technology?

ANDERSSON: Sun has a long history -- and a strong reputation -- as a provider of very high- level security systems and solutions. Our team consists of pioneers in encryption technology, and we build security into the very heart of our solutions. Security must be architected in from the start, it can't be bolted on as an afterthought. Most people are familiar with the security that is designed into Java technology, but I'm sure a lot of people have not yet realized the tremendous level of security that is delivered in Solaris 10. With this latest iteration of our leading OS, we are essentially delivering military grade security to all Solaris installations.

Gt: Are there any technologies on the horizon that you think could really solidify or even revolutionize Grid security?

ANDERSSON: I believe you need to take a holistic approach to security. It's not only how you access the Grid or how vulnerable it is for attacks from the network. It's also how well the data is protected from a privacy standpoint, it's about how you can compartmentalize the access rights and provide role-based access. It's also about process and people. For example, what procedures are in place to provide access to the Grid in the first place, and how is disaster recovery managed.

What we need to do for a real breakthrough to take place is to basically provide security "for free," meaning that it's built in from the start and that it doesn't come with a performance penalty. Some of that is essentially here now, very much like the security features built into Solaris. Other aspects of security are just around the corner, like getting to a point where network and system communication can be automatically encrypted without a noticeable performance penalty.

Many forward-thinking customers are architecting their new Grids to include provisions for improved security from the start, so the groundwork is being laid.

Gt: Finally, I am wondering about the future potential for Grid computing. It is being utilized in more and bigger research projects, the TeraGrid is up an running, and more and more enterprises are realizing its potential. How widespread can Grid become, and will it eventually overtake the current supercomputer model and become the standard option for HPC?

ANDERSSON: Obviously, I'm a big Grid fan, but even the naysayers of yesterday are starting to believe that Grid computing has massive potential. Just how big it will become, and what type of applications will be affected, remains to be seen. One hot area that is only now starting to be explored is how Grid can be used in more transactional applications and how well it can be integrated into models like Web services. Some people already believe that Grid can be all encompassing and can include basically all modes of computing (that view does assume that the nodes in the Grid are not all the same). Today, some applications are better suited to run on high-end SMP systems like our Sun Fire 25K server, while others are more suited to run on smaller systems like our AMD Opteron processor-based Sun Fire servers. So in terms of looking at the systems and storage solutions that make up the resources in the Grid, they will still have a profile that will fit better with certain applications, and those factors will determine how a particular Grid is put together. That basic assumption will remain going forward. System individuality will still exist for performance, scalability or economic reasons.