Network.com continues the innovation

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-02/sunflash.20080214.1.xml

SANTA CLARA, CA February 14, 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: JAVA) today announced the addition of 14 new applications in the Network.com Application Catalog, a collection of online grid-enabled applications that are available from Network.com’s Sun Grid compute utility service on a pay-per-use basis with “Click and Run” ease. Sun also announced a new partner program, “Sun Network.com Connection,” for independent software vendors (ISVs) to create and expand lucrative on-demand service offerings to end-users at a lower risk and cost with access to new channels. Additionally, Sun has expanded Network.com’s international availability with the Netherlands being the latest of the 25 countries worldwide from where its services can be utilized.

“An expanded catalog of over 40 applications from ISVs and open source communities covering a wide range of industry segments is not only increasing the diversity of the Network.com’s portfolio of pay-per-use services but also attracting more developers and end-users to use, build and share new services,” said Mark Herring, Senior Director of Software Marketing. “Network.com is providing developers and ISVs with both flexible IT infrastructure resources and a robust portal for creating, publishing and accessing open source-based as well as ISV applications. With a growing collection of applications, a host of new developer tools and worldwide availability, Network.com is evolving into a virtual on-demand data center that allows businesses of any size to leverage compute infrastructure without the cost of ownership and with the flexibility of scaling up or down compute resources in real time as business demands change.”

Very cool, bringing more solutions to Network.com should bring more opportunities in the grid on demand space which has to be a good thing for the grid movement, and for Sun. It will be interesting to see what new applications and solutions can be ported to this grid technology, being able to buy in capacity on demand can be a real enabler to your business, particularly if it’s for a set project or time period - I need 400 hours processing time for the next 3 weeks etc.