To learn more about Sun's strategy and vision for Network.com, I suggest you listen to this innovating@sun podcast.

Hear Hal Stern, Vice President of Sun Systems Engineering, and Jim Parkinson, Sun Vice President of Engineering for Collaboration and ISVs, discuss how ISVs, open source communities and developers, and end users can benefit from Network.com.

Also, check out the Sun Net Talk Program on Network.com here, our press release, and a short feature story published on the front page of sun.com this morning.  (I am quoted in there somewhere).  All these provide a lot if insight into what we're doing with Network.com.  

Laura McLellan, a leading Gartner analyst provides a great perspective on Network.com in today's Internet World:  "Sun is giving ISVs tech support to get their apps grid-enabled and free time to develop and test them," McLellan told internetnews.com. "HP and IBM charge from day one. And, Sun is letting the software provider keep customer control. I like the strategy because it lets them build communities of ISVs and software providers who can look at Sun and say 'This is not someone who is going to compete with us, but help us.' It's fully transparent."

Finally, here is a presentation, providing instructions on how to publish an application to the Network.com application catalog, using Blender, an open source rendering software for 3D content, as an example.

Today we launched the Network.com application catalog that enables software vendors, open source communities, and developers to publish applications online and deliver them as a service to scientists and researchers in business and academia.  Through Network.com, researchers will now have instant access to popular ISV and open source applications they need in their work on a pay-per-use basis.   I want to take a moment to share some thoughts on the significance of this.

I think this is pretty cool.  Network.com is truly the world's first offering that delivers high performance computing (HPC) applications and infrastructure for complex computations as a pay-as-you-go service to end users.  It's like the iTunes music store for HPC.  A research scientist looking to do some, say molecular modeling, can now log onto Network.com, select the application they want to run, upload their data, and crunch away. The service is available when and how they need it without prior reservation, and without long term contract obligation.

We expect Network.com to take HPC where HPC hasn't gone before.  Traditionally, serious users of HPC have primarily been organizations that have had deep enough pockets to invest in expensive IT infrastructure needed to run complex computations.  The little guys, small start-ups, individual developers, and smaller research labs, have had to either get access to HPC resources through a larger partner, or depend on inferior systems.  Now they can get access to a world-class HPC facility via a Web browser, and not just that, but a facility that hosts the applications they need to get the job done.  Network.com is truly breaking barriers to further adoption of HPC into new markets and opening up new opportunities.

For software vendors this opens up opportunities as well. With Network.com, we are making it easy for ISVs with HPC applications to enter the on-demand market.  They don't need to worry about owning, operating, and maintaining the infrastructure needed to deliver on-demand apps, and through Network.com they get a powerful oneline storefront to promote and market their applications.  This will allow ISVs to not only grow their existing business, but also enter new markets and offer their applications to users who traditionally haven't been able to afford their own HPC infrastructure.

Last September we announced a Readiness Initiative to enable ISVs more easily to port end deploy their applications to our grid environment.  The program provides resources for developing and marketing applications for Network.com, access to Sun's experts, and evaluation of pay-per-use business models.

The part I am most excited about however, is how Network.com can empower developers and open source communities, and help promote wider adoption of open source software.  Anyone can become a publisher of software to Network.com.  This means that open source communities working on HPC projects can distribute their software more easily. Today most open source projects posts the bits on their website for download.  Using Network.com they can now publish their applications in a production ready turn-key environment, and deliver them as a service to end users.  Same goes for individual developers.  They can become "powersellers" on Network.com and can easily charge for their applications if they choose to.

In addition to working with commercial ISV partners, we have joined over 50 open source projects, and are actively working on growing the list of applications available on Network.com.  We are just there as another member, and we are honored to be participating.

So what's the relationship between Sun Grid and Network.com?  Sun Grid provides he runtime service for the Network.com application catalog.  As I mentioned in my blog Sunday, first we had to deliver the infrastructure, and that's what Sun Grid really is: "infrastructure on-demand."  For many customers, having access to just the infrastructure is enough, especially those that are bringing their own applications.  We are now taking grid computing to the next level by adding "content" (applications) on top of this infrastructure, and allowing anyone to become a publisher of software on the system. This greatly extends the value of the system for end users. Network.com furthermore delivers an online storefront for publishers to market their applications.  If you look on Network.om today, you will see how each applications has its own page with information.  We intent to add more functionality to these pages in the future, such as rating system, customer feedback mechanism, and blogging function to enable communities of users and publishers to interact and share information.

Here is an architecture diagram of Network.com:

For a larger picture, click here.

This shows at a high level how the system works. In addition to the compute nodes powered by AMD Opteron Processors and running Solaris 10, and N1 Grid Engine, Sun Grid provides subsystems for billing, payment, metering and monitoring, job submission and storage. What we have added is the Application Catalog that consists of a Job Catalog that provides a list of published applications.  The Job Catalog can also include private applications that the users has uploaded and are only visible by that user. The Digital Entitlement Token Sub-System, a key innovation that we are delivering here, enables publishers to easily manage licensing of on-demand applications and charge for usage of their apps.  The front end is html based and provides access to the system Web browser. Job submission is as simple as packaging your work and uploading, picking which application to run, describing the job to the system, running it, and retrieving the results.  All available on an on-demand, pay as you go utility model that is priced at $1/CPU-hr. Compute time can be purchased using EBay's PayPal service, or directly from Sun. License for commercial ISV applications is managed through the Digital Entitlement Token system, but many of the applications are free of charge.

I think that's it for now.  Later today I am going to post a few links to some webtalks, and other resources that provide more information.