RSSSun moving to save its cloud?
Sun's floundering utility computing initiative, Network.com, is being spun off into a separate business unit, reports the Register. The move seems likely to form the first step in an effort to step up both profile and volume for the service, which despite having been one of the earliest utility computing efforts (founded in 2005) has seen newer challengers such as Amazon receive both the publicity and the customers.
The new business unit will be lead by Sun's current Chief Sustainability Officer, Dave Douglas. Putting the sustainability officer at the head of a technical business unit may be a little unusual, at least if one is looking for instant credibility, but the impression only lasts until you remember this item from a couple of weeks ago.
The service seems to have a healthy grounding in some scientific fields, to judge from a quick review of the published shared applications available in its catalog. This may speak well for its performance and cost, but may also indicate a degree of complexity that less rigorous minds shy away from.
Nonetheless, with Amazon's recent woes, it may be exactly the right time for Sun to make a move to up the exposure of their own cloud services. With the possibility of IBM opening up their own cloud computing centers in the near future, the window for Sun to be the only other big name in the game may be rapidly closing.
