Jim Parkinson's Weblog: "That which does not Kill you Makes you Stronger"

There are exciting activities happening this week in Network.com: we are releasing new features to enhance the availability and flexibility of Sun Grid.

A bit of background - the Sun Grid Compute Utility, at the heart of Network.com, is a true utility computing model that's all about simplicity and flexibility. You come and you go as you please. You use what you need, and you only pay for what you use. Sun Grid essentially gives "infrastructure on demand" to users who can't or won't make large investments in IT infrastructure. You don't sign long term contracts and you only use the grid when you need it. With Sun Grid, IT becomes an operational expense, not a capital expense. Available for just $1/CPU-hour

This March, we launched the Network.com Application Catalog. The Application Catalog gives developers the ability to create, publish and share applications online through Network.com.  With this catalog, you can get instant access to ISV and open source applications on a pay-per-use basis. The catalog also includes the ability to use digital tokens to manage and protect shared applications. Create, Publish &  Share!

What's new -

Internet (Bi Directional) Data Access  enables applications running on the Sun Grid computing environment to access external data and services over the Internet. This opens the possibility for Network.com to offer mashups of data and services from multiple sources.  It eliminates the need to download large data files to work with your apps and makes it much easier to take advantage of the high performance computing environment offered by Network.com

Job Submission API, in limited beta release and delivered to users as a Java Client Side API.  This allows developers to programmatically interface with Sun Grid for most common operations.  We also offer interfaces that use the API to provide additional access mechanisms, such as a command line interface. The API will be distributed as a Java Jar file with the associated documentation and sample applications.

Network.com goes international, providing expanded, international access to the Sun Grid Compute Utility and bringing the flexibility, scalability, economy and convenience of Network.com to 24 countries in Europe, Asia, Asia-Pacific, the U.K. and North America.  Developers, ISVs and end-users from these countries will  have access to the Sun Grid on-demand, as well as to the open source and ISV applications published in the Network.com application catalog.

Listen to the podcast that I did with Hal Stern a few weeks ago to hear more   .