I was intrigued by a story in The Register that promotes Java as a likely candidate for a cloud operating system. Working at Sun, I'm always happy to see Java recommended for anything. So I asked on Sun's cloud researchers, Mark Hodapp, what he thought about the notion.
In talking with Mark, it seems that Sun's looking in to this via Project Caroline, a Platform as a Service research project. But there's a hitch, “When we talk to potential users, says Mark, “they like the idea, but invariably they seem to have some native code that they wanted to bring along. Either that or there's a set up environment that assumes something that's incompatible enough that they'd have to do some sort of a rewrite of their launch and management scripts/code.”
So I went on to ask with developers if they are faced with a trade-off between a rewrite and working with a familiar EC2-like environment, does the higher level notion lose out? Mark said, “For now, but I can see that the market will progress to the point where the subset of users who want to write to a higher level notion like Java will be a lot more interesting.”
All in all, I got the notion that there's a lot to like about Java as a cloud operating system, but that we'll need more people using clouds from a variety of vendors before this happens.
In talking with Mark, it seems that Sun's looking in to this via Project Caroline, a Platform as a Service research project. But there's a hitch, “When we talk to potential users, says Mark, “they like the idea, but invariably they seem to have some native code that they wanted to bring along. Either that or there's a set up environment that assumes something that's incompatible enough that they'd have to do some sort of a rewrite of their launch and management scripts/code.”
So I went on to ask with developers if they are faced with a trade-off between a rewrite and working with a familiar EC2-like environment, does the higher level notion lose out? Mark said, “For now, but I can see that the market will progress to the point where the subset of users who want to write to a higher level notion like Java will be a lot more interesting.”
All in all, I got the notion that there's a lot to like about Java as a cloud operating system, but that we'll need more people using clouds from a variety of vendors before this happens.
If customers like to run their own code, why not just offer xVM Ops Center so they can orchestrate a bunch of xVM Servers hosted by Sun? That way, they can slice their computing resources howsoever they like.
Here are key advantages/differences compared to the Network.com grid:
1) xVM Servers are persistent (not bought by the hour)
2) xVM Servers have reliable resource quotas
3) xVM Servers can run anything, not just grid jobs
I really do think you should offer hosted xVM services - you do the network and hardware - let the customers do the software. Simple.
Posted by Kevin Hutchinson on October 24, 2008 at 05:23 PM PDT #
By selling xVM Servers in addition to physical servers, you really would be saying "the network is the computer". How can I suggest this to Christine Bucklin?
Posted by Kevin Hutchinson on October 24, 2008 at 05:28 PM PDT #