Sun is getting into the cloud services business, but which market is their target?

While the bulk of Sun-related news this week relates to reported talks of a buyout by IBM, the company took a break from negotiations to introduce their own cloud computing and storage infrastructure, challenging Amazon, Google, Rackspace, and perhaps VMware, Microsoft, and Nirvanix.

Sun is leveraging the assets they acquired from Q-layer earlier this year on top of OpenSolaris, MySQL, ZFS, and just about everything else in their arsenal to offer their own virtual data center (VDC) strategy. The Sun Cloud will be a private (inside the firewall) environment offering mobility of virtual machines. Q-layer had partnerships with both VMware and Microsoft and functioned with Windows, OpenSolaris, and Linux, suggesting that this will be quite a full-featured offering. Suddenly Sun’s free OpenSolaris offering on Amazon EC2 makes a lot more sense – it provides a gateway to take virtual computing business from the Bezos team!

One very nifty angle Sun is taking is enabling VirtualBox system images to be saved to (and presumably run in) their cloud. I wonder about monetization, since VirtualBox is more of a desktop virtualization system than VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V, but the prospect of clicking “Upload to Cloud” is intriguing! OpenOffice will also allow cloud storage, a foil to Google Apps.

The Sun Cloud also includes a managed storage service. Sun apparently has three storage protocols: A proprietary Sun Cloud Storage API, WebDAV, and an object API likely leveraging Amazon’s AWS. The company claims that they are API-compatible with AWS, allowing applications written with Amazon in mind to be easily ported to their cloud storage service.

One key point to consider with all of this cloud talk, however, is how prepared each company is to support enterprise computing needs. Long-term viability depends on paying customers, and only the largest systems can attract enough end-user nickels and dimes to survive. Enterprise solutions are where the real money is, and questions remain about how prepared companies like Amazon, Google, and Rackspace are to support the needs of corporate users.

There are really three cloud markets: Shared clouds for small developers and enterprise customers and private cloud systems. Amazon was strong from the start with the little guys, Web 2.0 startups and end-user services like Jungle Disk, and Rackspace/Mosso and Google are challenging them in this space. Sun’s focus on AWS compatibility and VirtualBox suggests that they plan to play in this sandbox.

But the enterprise cloud is another matter entirely. Nirvanix stands strong in shared managed storage services, racking up win after win with big customers. EMC, VMware, Microsoft and others are positioning themselves as private alternatives in this space. Will Sun try to compete here, too? They are certainly talking about private clouds and the virtual data center, but there is a serious risk that they will lose focus trying to take on too many roles, and enterprise users won’t tolerate poor pre- and post-sales support! 

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2009. | Sun Launches Their Own Cloud, But For Which Market?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.

It could be big. There is no denying the effect VMware has had on the modern data center – nearly everyone I talk to in the IT industry considers server virtualization a fundamental element of modern infrastructure strategy. And server virtualization has done more for the deployment of enterprise storage and other high availability technologies, than any other movement, from green computing to services-based infrastructure. And it has encompassed these movements, becoming the way, not just a technology.

But is VDC really an OS? And will it conquer the data center? And would this be a good thing? There’s the rub.

First, the obligatory description. Virtual Data Center effectively re-badges lots of things VMware (and the server virtualization industry in general) have been working on as “vServices”. They divide these up into Application vServices, Infrastructure vServices, Cloud vServices, and Management vServices.

These four elements, in fact, do sound like a post-modern definition of an operating system, much more so than Google Chrome. VMware includes the ability to share resources, execute applications, and store data in a managed way. And the cloud component is reminiscent of how the old client/server architecture has evolved into our modern connected world. In this way, VDC really is an operating system for the enterprise data center, and extends it into a cloud beyond those doors.

This is the most compelling and realistic post-datacenter world I have heard of, thoroughly trouncing shared infrastructure, the (Amazon/Google) cloud, SaaS, Java or Linux everywhere, Sun’s containers, and Microsoft’s world of Windows. For the first time, we are talking about an infrastructure that could actually be built, wouldn’t require a forklift (or shipping container) or the migration to an entirely new software environment, and reflects the diversity of modern IT systems.

Certainly, VMware has heavyweights in their corner. Cisco provides the connectivity, EMC provides the storage, Intel provides the CPU, Dell provides the servers, and so on. But it’s not that simple. Like Microsoft, VMware will have to manage the “input” from every networking, storage, CPU, and server provider, not to mention the vast ecosystem of software components. It’s much more like Windows than Macintosh in this respect, with VDC being a loosely-federated OS rather than a closed monoculture.

I predict that how well VMware handles the divergent parties trying to play in their OS will determine the future not just of VDC, but of VMware itself.

Oh, and VMware also introduced View, perhaps the future of the desktop.

See my posts on Gestalt IT for similar enterprise IT infrastructure commentary

© sfoskett for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat, 2008. | VMware Virtual Datacenter Operating System: Heavyweight or Hot Air?
This post was categorized as Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage. Each of my categories has its own feed if you'd like to filter out or focus on posts like this.