Sun Microsystems, which is in the process of creating its own public cloud offering, is rolling out a host of services designed to help businesses evaluate their readiness for cloud computing and then to help them build a road map to reach that goal. The cloud computing services are part of Sun's $1 billion professional services business. The moves come as Oracle prepares to buy Sun for $7.4 billion in a deal expected to close this summer.
As Sun Microsystems continues to work on its upcoming
public cloud computing platform, the company is beginning to roll out
services around the burgeoning technology trend.
At the 2009 CommunityWest conference June 1, Sun is unveiling Sun Cloud
Strategic Planning Service, a host of services offerings designed to help
businesses make the move into cloud computing.
While the new services are complementary to the company's planned Sun Cloud
offering-which is scheduled for launch later this year-Sun will work with
whatever technology is best for its customers, Amy O'Connor, vice president of
services marketing for Sun, said in an interview.
"Sun Cloud is one option in a number of options customers will face,"
O'Connor said.
Sun officials are looking to help enterprises better evaluate their cloud
computing alternatives-both public and private-and create a road map for making
that happen.
Businesses seem to understand what cloud computing can do for them, but need
help in figuring out how to get there and what is involved, O'Connor said. That
is where Sun's new services offerings come in, she said.
"You want to ... jump on the [cloud computing] bandwagon and hope it takes you
with it, but there's a lot of hard work that goes on underneath," she said.
Everything from virtualization to applications to hardware must be evaluated
before a business can start laying out its plans for cloud computing, O'Connor
said.
The new cloud services are part of Sun's $1 billion professional services
offerings.
Sun is making an aggressive push into cloud computing with its upcoming Sun
Cloud, which officials said will be based on open-source technology, including
MySQL, Glassfish and the ZFS file system. It also will be built atop technology
Sun acquired in January when it bought Q-layer, an infrastructure management
company that has technology that automates the deployment and management of
public and private cloud environments.
In a blog
post in March, just as Sun announced the Sun Cloud idea, President and CEO
Jonathan Schwartz said that the APIs and file formats also will be open, and
that Sun's offering will not only operate as a public cloud but also can be
used by enterprises as an internal cloud behind their firewalls.
"We recognize that workloads subject to fiduciary duty or regulatory
scrutiny won't move to public clouds," Schwartz wrote. "If you can't move to
the cloud, we'll move the cloud to you."
However, that was before Oracle announced in April its intention to buy
Sun for $7.4 billion, and it's unclear how the acquisition will impact
Sun's cloud plans.
Industry observers are expecting big things from cloud computing. Gartner
analysts in March said global cloud services revenue could move beyond $56.3
billion this year-from $46.4 billion in 2008-and grow to $150.1 billion in
2013. IDC was more tempered in its
projections, calling for worldwide spending on cloud services to reach $42
billion by 2012.
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