Sun Microsystems, Inc (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced it has added additional features to its Network.com pay-per-use offering, giving developers and open source communities the ability to just "click and run" applications online and a unique new way to create personalised application play-lists.
The first of its kind, the new Network.com Application Catalogue enables developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) to develop and publish their applications online, allowing communities of scientists and academics in life sciences, education, engineering, and other fields to accelerate innovation and complete research projects quickly and less expensively.
Hundreds of new customers, end-users and communities have joined Sun's Network.com, including InfoSolve Technologies, Lawrence Livermore Labs and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the flexible, pay-per-use model and immediate access to the applications they need to create and expand lucrative service offerings to end-users.
Built upon Sun Grid Compute Utility innovation, the Solaris 10 OS-powered Network.com Application Catalogue offers both an Application Catalogue to quickly and securely offer their applications to end-users and a Digital Entitlement Token system that gives ISVs the option of a new and flexible software licensing mechanism.
"Customers across a wide-range of industries - from life sciences to education to manufacturing use Network.com running the Solaris 10 OS to re-allocate capital costs and take advantage of Sun's true utility model," said Rich Green, executive vice-president of Software, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "With over 20 applications currently available, we are providing end-users the ability to just click and run applications, giving them a low-cost alternative for high-performance computing and empowering ISVs with new revenue streams and market opportunities."
New Jersey-based Infosolve Technologies gives customers across a wide range of industries the ability to rapidly integrate, cleanse and standardise their enterprise data. Data matching (record linkage) across disparate data sources without a common identifier is a key challenge for their customers. Infosolve's data integration experts use the Network.com pay-per-use utility offering to obtain additional processing power needed to match millions of records across multiple attributes and offer customers a "single view" of their data.
"We help customers match data across a series of attributes, which can be a simple cross-section of a few characteristics or a complex multi-attribute matching across multiple data sources with millions of records," said Subbu Manchiraju, Vice-President, Infosolve Technologies. "We look to Network.com as a secure, scalable way to gain the additional processing power we need to service our customers without the added hassle of building and maintaining a data centre infrastructure."
ISVs and open source communities deliver applications on Solaris 10 that just 'click and run'
Facing increased competitive pressure, longer sales cycles and rising operational costs, ISVs are looking for a low-cost way to deliver their software on-demand to end-users.
Lacking the infrastructure and service-provider know-how, these customers are looking to Network.com to bypass the hassle and cost of managing and maintaining data centre infrastructure, make software applications available to customers and evolve their business to capitalise on today's emerging software trends.
Supported by leading ISVs, open source communities
"Wolfram Research works with the most important scientific research operations around the world," explains Joy Costa, Senior Manager of Global Partnerships, Wolfram Research. "Many don't have the ability to scale their clusters to thousands of nodes. We are excited to point to Sun so our customers can get answers faster using Mathematica."
Network.com gives developers immediate online access to the applications they need, in a pay-per-use model that speeds time to results. ConcurrentEDA, CDO2, Simbiosys, Wolfram Research, Mathspec, Q-Chem, OpenEye Scientfic Software, Hypercube and WU BLAST, are just a few of the ISVs that support Network.com.
Network.com customers of SimBioSys have immediate access to our the eHits application, significantly speeding their time to results. "The Network.com Application Catalogue gives me a more efficient means to access eHiTS for virtual high throughput screening. This new technology is an important resource to our school and allows students and faculty to advance research faster than ever before," said Nancy Deng, School of Pharmacy, University of Southern California.
Other customers who have tapped SimBioSys for Network.com include Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories and the US-EPA's National Centre for Computational Toxicology.
Network.com delivers easy access to Solaris 10 for developers
Network.com powered by Solaris 10 OS gives developers building HPC applications the compute resources, tools and community they need to create, post and make their work available to a large number of users without having to invest a costly infrastructure. The Network.com developer community has created dozens of projects, many of these from open source communities that have provided access to these applications.
With the Network.com Application Catalogue, developers can make their applications available pre configured and ready to run, removing barriers to adoption. Additionally, Network.com allows easy monetisation of the intellectual property developed and visibility to these applications.
For more information, please see www.network.com.
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A singular vision - "The Network Is The Computer" - guides Sun in the development of technologies that power the world's most important markets. Sun's philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities is at the forefront of the next wave of computing: the Participation Age. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.
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