Jim Laurent's Weblog

I recently had the opportunity to speak at FOSE about cloud computing.  I was also stationed at Sun's table in the Cloud section of the exhibit hall and had an unbelievable number of people come up and ask me what I thought cloud computing is.  Sometimes I think they were just polling all the vendors to see how many different answers they could get.  Needless to say, there are a wide variety of opinions as to the meaning of a cloud and the best use of a computing cloud.

While traveling to Anaheim last week for the DISA customer conference, I spent a good amount of time in LAX.  It occurred to me while I was sitting there that the airport is a perfect analogy to a cloud.  It just happens to be a transportation cloud.

What is an airport?

An airport is a shared transportation resource run by a single organization serving a variety of vendors and customers.

How is an airport like a cloud.... Let me count the ways.

1. Shared common security model that keeps vendors and customers in the right place at the right time.
2. Shared infrastructure that can be virtualized to a variety of vendors depending upon their needs including:
1. Runways
2. Gates
3. Ticket issuing stations
4. Baggage handling
   
5. Security stations
6. Customs inspectors
7. Shopping
   
3. Air traffic control to ensure that planes don't crash in the air
4. Ground traffic control to ensure that planes go to gates they've paid for
5. A single manager for the shared service (the local airport authority)

Why did airports become clouds?

Imagine if each airline actually had to have it's own airport in each city.  A Delta plane could only fly from one Delta airport to another.  Each would need their own runways, parking lots, security guards and more.  It would clearly be an unsustainable model.

Benefits of the transportation cloud

Clearly the airlines saw the benefits of sharing an infrastructure in a number of ways including:

• Reduced costs (less real estate, infrastructure and personnel)
  
• Reduce training through standardization of tools and process
• Improved efficiency
• Less waste (fewer unused resources such as ticket agents, gates, security guards)
  
• The ability to scale an airline up or down as economic factors required and pay for only the resources used.
  

The idea of a cloud is not so new after all and has been around for years in different forms.  It's up to us in the computer industry to take these existing models with manual processes and automate them in a way that provides the same security and flexibility as we find in an airport today.

One of the unique things about the "transportation cloud" is that planes can easily leave one cloud (the LAX cloud) and travel to another cloud (the DCA cloud)  because of agreed upon standards in flight number, communications protocols and a standardization body (the FAA).  Sun is building a cloud infrastructure just as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other have.  Sun, however, is also focusing on open, interoperable standards for cloud computing so that sometime the future, it will be easy to move an application not just within the Sun cloud from from the Sun cloud to the Amazon  cloud and back again.

Join the community and start to experience the benefits of the cloud.  Learn more and stay up to date on the status of Sun's cloud computing offering.

Hopefully, I'll see you sometime soon in the clouds.

Important note

This blog is my opinion only (actually just random musings) and does not represent official Sun policy.  I have no inside knowledge of Oracle or Sun's intentions or plans for the upcoming acquisition of Sun by Oracle

There are a whole host of reasons that Oracle bought Sun, some of which have already been clearly stated by Oracle management. They include Java, MySQL, Sparc, Servers, Storage and Solaris. Listen to the webcast to hear it from Larry Ellison, Safra Catz as well as other Oracle and Sun leaders.  Also, please review the FAQ regarding the acquistion.

I think that there are some specific things that Oracle will love to gain in this acquisition.

Star/Openoffice

As the second largest software company in the world, there is at least one thing that Oracle has NOT had yet that their primary competitor has and that is an office automation suite used by students, grandmas,  and enterprises worldwide.  The ability to have your name in front of millions of users is a powerful tool particularly when they can download it for free and run it on Windows, MacOS, Linux distros and Solaris.  I think we know that Larry is not a great friend of Microsoft and this will give him one more thing to poke in their eye.

xVM VirtualBox

This free and powerful virtualization tool provides an ideal platform to allow customers to test, develop and deploy Oracle software solutions on a variety of platforms in the comfort of a user's own laptop.  Its upcoming ability to upload a virtual machine to the "cloud" will provide a low cost way for Oracle to accelerate adoption of their hosted application services.

JavaFX

The upcoming land grab for rich internet applications (RIAs) will be a fierce competition between Microsoft, Adobe and Oracle with Sun's JavaFX.  JavaFX provides an advanced tool with proven security and programming model to deploy RIAs on billions of devices over the network.  Its open source status will ensure a broad developer acceptance and diverse contributions from industry, academia and government.  In the fight for "eyeballs" JavaFX will provide Oracle with a significant competitive advantage in function as well as wide device support.

Sun Federal

Sun Federal has a broad reach and it an important strategic part of Sun Microsystems.  Our staff works closely with DoD, Intelligence and Civilian agencies to deploy mission critical applications using a complete systems approach of servers, storage, software and services.  With the anticipated new requirements for government IT efficiencies, Sun Federal will be a real asset to Oracle.

GlassFish

This free, open source application server is fast and easy to download and get started.  I can provide a low (no) cost way for new businesses to get started in enterprise datacenters, college dorm rooms or Amazon EC2 appliances.  Owning Glassfish will give Oracle access to a whole class of customer that normally might not consider their enterprise software.

The Sun Modular Datacenter

What better way to deliver a soup to nuts enterprise application service in a can?  Enough said!

Sun Ray thin clients

As far back as 1996, Larry Ellison has been talking about a low cost, network computer that draws services from a virtualized desktop environment. Sun introduced the Sun Ray ultra-thin client in 1999, and I can personally vouch for the fact that some of those early revision network appliances are still working on desks in our Sun Federal headquarters in McLean, VA.  The savings in energy, noise, real estate and refresh costs certainly must have helped Sun's bottom line along the way.  We have deployed many tens of thounsands Sun Rays in commercial industry and government over the years.  I feel certain that Oracle will expand the usefulness and applicability of the Sun Ray.

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I have only touched the surface of advanced research, development, services and products from which Oracle will benefit.  Both Sun and Oracle have always believed that the customer wants true innovation from their IT vendors.  This is what Sun strives for at all times.

I leave you with a quote from a developer I met at the DISA customer conference this week.

"I love Java.  I wrote my thesis on Java.  I think this merger of Oracle and Sun is a match made in heaven."

What do you think?  Please offer your comments!

If you are a part of the US DoD you may remember my earlier blog entry (July 2007) in which I posted customizations to the Solaris Security Toolkit designed to help secure a computer in compliance with DISA Security Guidelines.  Although I haven't done any additional work since that time, Aaron Lippold of DISA took my work and extended it to increase compliance and updated it to more recent versions of DISA STIGs.

Aaron recently notified me that his modifications have now been posted on Forge.mil.

Forge.mil is a family of services provided to support the DoD's technology development community. The system currently enables the collaborative development and use of open source and DoD community source software. These initial software development capabilities are growing to support the full system life-cycle and enable continuous collaboration among all stakeholders including developers, testers, certifiers, operators, and users.

This is great news because it provides a way for the DoD community to collaborate together to make the tool better for everyone. If you are a DoD employee or contractor with a Common Access Card (CAC) you can access this project at https://software.forge.mil/sf/projects/dodsst/.

Join the community, download the tools, contribute changes and make your life generally better by using the Toolkit and DoDSST project to secure your Solaris 10 environment quicker, in an automated and more reproducible fashion.

 I'd like to thank Aaron for the hard work he has done and for his iniative in creating this project for the good of the US Government.

Once again Sun will be showing a variety of our products and services at the DISA customer conference this year being held in Anaheim, CA. Come see us in booth #924

Sun's systems and blades based on Intel's new Nehalem processors

Find the fastest, most cost effective and energy efficient Intel processors that can run Solaris 10, Open Solaris, VMware, MS Windows, Red hat and Suse platforms.

Sun ATCA Blade chassis

As a leader it open systems design, it makes sense that Sun would offer a blade chassis compliant with the Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture.  Sun offers Intel, AMD and Sparc chip designs in a single blade chassis.

Here's a photo of the traveling exhibit that we will be bringing.  Learn more about Sun's ATCA products as well as our competitive Blade 6000 products now features the new Intel Nehalem family of processors.

Thin Clients

Our Sun Ray Thin client technology allows you to save money, "be green" and reduce operating costs whether you are runing a Solaris, Linux or Windows environment. Read about the many customers who have deployed thin clients successfully replacing existing PC environments.

Identity Management and SOA software

Sun's Identity Management and SOA solutions allow customers to get a handle on their users, data and programs making them more agile, responsive and secure while helping them comply to government regulations.

This popular, open source database can cost as much as 10% of the traditional vendors, reducing your cost while extending your reach to the internet. Download and try MySQL today.  It installs in less than 15 minutes on all the popular OS platforms.

Sun 7000 Unified Storage System

Sun's newest, network attached storage system, the 7000 series provides high performance, low cost storage with the advantages of solid state disk and detailed analytic tools.

OpenSolaris

Experience the next generation of Solaris technology by downloading OpenSolaris or Solaris 10 today for Sparc, Intel or AMD based platforms.

Dynamic Systems

Dynamic Systems Inc is a Sun partner with the  capability of providing all of Sun's products and service via GSA contract, Enterprise Software Iniative contract or their BPA with DISA known as SSTEW.

CopperEye

CopperEye is a leading provider of enterprise data management solutions that eliminate the economic, technical and operational barriers to storing and accessing massive volumes of data.

And more....

Ask any of our booth personnel (including me) for any information about these or any other Sun products or services in which you are interested.