Sun rises on pay-as-you-go grid computing

Sun plans to announce a plan to let customers rent supercomputing power from the company's data centres, paying for exactly as much muscle as they need.

The program, called the Secure N1 Grid, will cost $1 per processor per hour to use, President Jonathan Schwarz is expected to announce at a New York event designed to curry favour among Wall Street customers. Sun also plans to announce new midrange storage systems, two mid-range Unix servers based on the company's UltraSparc IV processor and new networking gear to improve secure website performance.

The event is the third quarterly announcement this year from the server and software company. Those awaiting the upcoming version 10 release of the Solaris operating system - and the specific open-source licensing terms under which Sun will share it - will have to wait for the fourth quarterly announcement toward the end of the year.

Although IBM and Hewlett-Packard offer competing rent-a-supercomputer programs, Sun's trying to make itself stand out with a pricing strategy it argues is different and very competitive. New pricing plans are Schwartz's hallmark: Since he became Sun's new number two in April, he's been working to revamp Sun's marketing as well as its technology.

Sageza Group analyst Clay Rider sad: "Sun does well when they get to rewrite the rules of the game," but when it comes to novel pricing plans, it takes years to change customers' buying behaviour.

Schwartz is moving to make Sun's products available in three ways: the standard one-time sales method that is prominent today; subscriptions that bundle products and services; and utility plans for which payments increase or decrease according to the consumption of computing resources.

Also Sun will sell access to its new StorEdge 6920 storage system with utility pricing. As with its top-end 9900 series line in a program launched in June, Sun will own, install, maintain and operate the systems according to the consumption of "Sun power units - a measurement of storage capacity and features such as data protection. The 6920 utility prices will be about half that of the higher-end systems, said Chris Wood, chief technologist of Sun's data management group.

Sun's grid program offers servers using Sun's UltraSparc processor or Advanced Micro Devices' Opteron processor, a variant of the "x86" chip family popularized by Intel's Pentium and Xeon products, said Terry Erdle, vice president of marketing for Sun's worldwide services and solutions group. Customers can rent a "grid" of interconnected computers that can be used for calculation tasks such as computing financial risks, searching seismic data that can locate oil fields or detailing frames in animated movies.

Sun's not first with the idea of renting out supercomputer power, a service often geared for customers that have surging processing needs. IBM launched its program more than a year and half ago with oil and gas customers, expanding later to biology and genetics research. And HP this year began renting computing brawn to entertainment industry customers.

Sun's current service is for customers that require little in the way of hand-holding, Erdle said. It plans to launch another service, called Sun Utility Computing for Grid, that will cost more but provide more elaborate services from Sun and partners with expertise in particular fields. Partners will include CGI Group, Atos Origin and EDS, Erdle said.

Sun is touting its financial industry ties at the event. It will announce, for example, that Tokyo Stock Exchange has chosen to switch its computing infrastructure to Sun servers between 2005 to 2008.

Financial services companies, along with telecommunications corporations, are Sun's core customers; Sun rose with their lavish spending in the late 1990s and fell with their troubles this decade. Even though financial services are rebounding some, Sun's future depends on how well it does with its push to new segments such as health care, manufacturing, retail and governments, Ryder said.

"I think if Sun is looking to the past to declare its future, they're doomed," Ryder said. "The jury's still out whether they'll overcome the hill. But at least they're moving in the right direction."

It also faces heavy competition from IBM. In an attempt to rain on Sun's parade, Big Blue plans to announce that Wall Street consultancy Random Walk Computing has created a version of its electronic brokerage and trading software for IBM's Power processor-based Unix and Linux systems. HP, meanwhile, has used Linux as a tool to attack Sun, for example with a partnership with market data distributor Reuters.

IBM and Dell have been steadily gaining share in the server market at Sun's expense, though Sun in the second quarter made some progress with its goal in increasing its unit shipments.

Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com