Grid computing now bundled with Sun workstations 6 February, 2006 By Paul Weinberg

"I think you can say that Sun is being aggressive in actually getting Grid computing out there as part of the base load on a number of systems," stated IT industry analyst Rob Enderle, principal for the San Jose, Calif.-based Enderle Group. "You are not paying extra for it; you get it as part of the package."

Currently, the Sun workstations featuring Grid include the AMD Opteron processor based single and dual core Ultra 40 and the enterprise class UltraSparc Ultra 45.

These models are specifically targeted at the vendor's major client base of companies in a range of industries that employ hundreds or thousands of engineers and scientists who rely on compute intense and multi-threaded applications to create simulation models and provide analysis.

These engineers may be exploring how the next generation of fighter plane or car might function under certain weather conditions or determine the location of an oil find in a difficult geography, for instance, said Rajesh Shakkarwar, senior director for workstations, Network Systems Group at the Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun.

Because these workstations are not generally used on a 24 hours, seven day a week basis, there is a lot of underutilized raw computing power left over in the high performing workstations which can be recycled by Grid for other applications, explained Shakkarwar.

"For the same investment a customer can get a better return because they can run another set of applications."

Shakkarwar also says that the new Sun Ultra 40 and 45 workstations are 39 per cent quieter than a comparable Hewlett Packard model. "[End user clients] are very sensitive about how noisy these workstations can be," he said.

Enderle suggests that Sun's new bundling will help expand the use of Grid in the market. "Everybody is going to jump on it."

Also, because of the complexity of this technology, the channel has some business opportunities both in the consulting and the implementation, he stated. "Grid is not an easy technology to use. It is not like you turn it on. A lot of things have to be rewritten [in the software] to operate in that environment."

"Once you start doing Grid, there is a good chance that you can drive a pretty strong upgrade cycle because you want the hardware to be at a similar level. And so, Grid can drive a replacement cycle that might otherwise not exist," Enderle said.

The challenge for Sun's competitors when they come out with their own workstation/Grid bundle offering, especially IBM and Hewlett Packard, is that it is more difficult to construct a bundle around a free operating system like Linux, added Enderle.

"Linux is already free. The way [vendors] get their revenue from Linux is through services and add-ons. It is harder to reduce the price for a Linux bundle because there is not a lot of price to reduce."