Sun Microsystems Inc. has announced that more than 15 independent software vendors (ISVs) are working with Sun to determine how to host their applications on the Sun Grid Compute Utility. The Sun Grid Compute Utility is powered by the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) and Sun Fire x64 servers. By hosting their applications on the Sun Grid Compute Utility, ISVs can expand their addressable market by making their software available as a service to end users.

SPSS Inc., a worldwide provider of predictive analytics software, was one of the first ISVs to enlist in discussions on how to host their applications on the Sun Grid Compute Utility. The company's predictive analytics technology connects data to effective strategic action by drawing reliable conclusions about current conditions and critical future events. By adopting the Sun Grid Compute Utility, SPSS can offer its customers a powerful and simple option for implementing the company's predictive analytics technology in their operational business systems to drive return on investment.

"Hosting our applications on the Sun Grid Compute Utility provides us with an interesting new avenue for revenue generation through widespread deployment of our predictive analytics solutions," said Jon Otterstatter, CTO and EVP at SPSS. "The Sun Grid Compute Utility can provide our customers with access to high-performance computing resources needed to efficiently handle their growing data volume without the requirement of heavy investment in hardware infrastructure. By taking advantage of this utility, the on-demand computing model can help us distribute the results of our predictions to a much wider audience in a form that they can easily use."

SimBioSys Inc, a chemistry software provider that enables computational chemists to find and optimize lead drug candidates faster and more easily with eHiTS (Electronic High Throughput Screening), is excited about the new model. "We are excited to offer our software on the Sun Grid Compute Utility," said Zsolt Zsoldos, SimBioSys' president and chief scientific officer. "Our testing of eHiTS on the Sun Grid has shown impressive scalability up to at least 100 CPUs. As a result, problems that used to run for weeks can now be solved in days, which allows the drug discovery pipeline to be filled faster and with more leads."

Gridathon Success Leads to Supercomputing Session and Online Presence

Earlier this year Sun introduced the Sun Gridathon, an interactive hands-on series of technical presentations and seminars hosted during an industry event to provide attendees focused on Grid development with information on how to port, architect, and deploy applications to a Grid environment. Initial participants indicated that the Sun Gridathon was a unique and useful experience for learning more about how to port their applications to the Sun Grid Compute Utility. Based on this success, Sun will host a Sun Gridathon at Supercomputing 2006, enabling conference attendees to meet with Sun Grid engineers and architects for in-depth technical discussions. Interested parties can register for the Sun Gridathon at Supercomputing 2006 www.sun.com/sungrid/sc06.

In addition, Sun has introduced an online version of the Sun Gridathon. This online version of the Sun Gridathon is a virtual seminar for Grid professionals interested in taking advantage of the latest techniques and software for Grid and utility computing. On December 7, the online version of the Sun Gridathon will also host a live question and answer session with Sun engineers and architects. Details on the online version of the Sun Gridathon and the live Q&A session are available at http://www.sun.com/service/sungrid/gridathon/index.html.

Sun Rewards Sun Grid Developer Community Members

Sun has announced the winners of the Sun Grid Compute Utility Cool Apps Prize for Innovation Contest. The contest was announced earlier this year and offered up to $50,000 in prizes for developers who created winning projects for the Sun Grid Compute Utility. More than 100 developers entered the contest, generating 19 projects designed to build out the Sun Grid Compute Utility. Grand Prize awards of $15,000 were rewarded to Sean Fitzgerald for his Ganet project, and Ivar Chan for his Distributed Index project, a general purpose indexing engine. Don Casteel won a First Prize of $5,000 for his 3D Fractal Rendering project, an application that assists in the creation, rendering, and animation of IFS fractals in full 3D as volumetric density fields. More details on the contest and winning projects can be found at https://publications.developer.network.com/coolapps/winners/.