Sun Microsystems Unveils Open Cloud Platform

Sun Microsystems has unveiled the Sun Open Cloud platform, the company’s open cloud computing infrastructure, powered by software technologies from Sun, including Java, MySQL, OpenSolaris and Open Storage.

Signalling a massive opportunity to open the world’s nascent cloud market, Sun also outlined that a core element of its strategy is to offer public clouds and previewed plans to launch the Sun Cloud, its first public cloud service targeted at developers, students and start-ups. Both are key elements in Sun’s strategy to bring openness and interoperability to the cloud computing market.

As part of the company’s commitment to building communities, Sun has also announced the release of a core set of Open APIs, unveiled broad partner support for its cloud platform and demonstrated innovative features of the Sun Cloud. Sun is opening its cloud APIs for public review and comment, so that others building public and private clouds can easily design them for compatibility with the Sun Cloud. Sun’s Cloud API specifications are published under the Creative Commons licence, which essentially allows anyone to use them in any way.

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Developers will be able to deploy applications to the Sun Cloud immediately, by leveraging pre-packaged VMIs (virtual machine images) of Sun’s open source software, eliminating the need to download, install and configure infrastructure software. To participate in the discussion and development of Sun’s Cloud APIs, go to sun.com/cloud

Sun envisions a world of many clouds - public and private - that are open and interoperable. With the Sun Open Cloud Platform, Sun is driving a paradigm shift away from proprietary clouds that limit choice and lock in customers toward a world of open and interoperable clouds.

Leveraging the best in open source technologies, the Sun Open Cloud Platform brings together Java, MySQL, OpenSolaris and Open Storage to deliver efficiencies in cost and scale, and easier and faster software development. The Sun Open Cloud Platform is ideal for developers, who value openness, flexibility and ease of use.

“Sun’s approach to cloud computing blends our expertise in developing open source software and communities with design innovation. Sun’s Open Cloud platform is the first step in delivering on our vision of a world that has many clouds that are both open and interoperable,” said Dave Douglas, Senior Vice President, Cloud Computing, Sun Microsystems. “Our cloud architecture empowers developers with the expanded interoperability and freedom of choice they need to easily take advantage of the agility, efficiency and cost benefits of cloud computing.”

Sun Cloud – Data Centre in the Cloud

At the core of the Sun Cloud will be the first two services - Sun Cloud Storage Service and Sun Cloud Compute Service - which will be available this summer. Customers will be able to take advantage of the combined benefits of open source and cloud computing via the Sun Cloud to accelerate the delivery of new applications, reducing overall risk and quickly scaling compute and storage capacity up and down to meet demand.

At the core of the Sun Cloud Compute Service are the Virtual Data Centre (VDC) capabilities acquired in Sun’s purchase of Q-layer in January 2009, which provide everything an individual or team of developers needs to build and operate a data centre in the cloud. The VDC provides a unified, integrated interface to stage an application running on any operating system within a cloud, including OpenSolaris, Linux or Windows. It features a drag-and-drop method, in addition to APIs and a command line interface for provisioning compute, storage and networking resources via any Web browser. The Sun Cloud Storage Service supports WebDAV protocols for easy file access and object store APIs that are compatible with Amazon’s S3 APIs.