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technology, with Sun Utility Grid (Sun 2009g, Sun 2009h) - recently re-branded
and offered as a Cloud Computing service (Wikipedia 2009b). Sun Utility Grid
is a large commercial Grid that consists of the first global pay-to-play resource. It
allows its customers to create jobs and submit an application (Gohring 2006, Singer
2004a, Singer 2004b). Sun Utility Computing for Grid based solutions can start
as low as $0.99 per dual CPU node, per hour with a click-through license and a
four hour minimum usage requirement. For its all-inclusive, pay-for-use Sun Utility
Computing for Midrange Sun StorEdge Systems, pricing can start at $0.80 per Sun
Power Unit (SPU), per month. Designed as a Grid computing infrastructure, Sun
reported that its pay-per-use offering is perfect for its high-performance computing
markets shown in table 5.8.
Table 5.8:
Sun Grid's target market
Industry
Applications
Finance/Banking
Risk and portfolio analysis
Energy
Reservoir simulations seismic analysis
Digital content creation, animation, rendering, digital asset
management
Entertainment/Media
Electronic design automation, computation fluid dynamics,
crash test simulation, aerodynamic modeling
Manufacturing
Government / Education
Weather analysis, image processing
Health Science
Medical imaging, bioinformatics, drug development simulation
Sun, our example in this business case, is the resource provider actor, that offers
computing resources and achieves at the same time high utilization through the
Grid virtualisation technology. On the other hand the customers that buy resources
on demand are the users of this service. The business model that Sun is following
in this specific example is IaaS since it provides infrastructure as a service to its
customers.
Having demonstrated the provider's view, we will attempt to present a user in this
business case. A user, a company named Virtual Compute Corporation (Sun 2009f),
utilizes the computing resources of Sun as its infrastructure to provide its services.
At the same time this company provides its services, with the help of the Grid infra-
structure rented from Sun. The business case into which this company falls is the
second one. Virtual Compute Corporation is a global provider of on-demand high-
performance computing resources and IT infrastructure management for commer-
cial and government entities. Its target market consists of companies in the energy
industry, space sciences and life sciences with the main purpose the provision of
tailored solutions that meet customers' unique needs. Virtual Compute Corporation
