Sun Grid Seeking Application Developers

According to Jeff Burt's article today on eWeek, Sun is working on incentives to entice enterprise developers to build applications that can be hosted on the Sun Utility Grid.

In the article, Aisling MacRunnels, senior director of utility computing at Sun, says the following.

"A key to attracting more users to the grid is building up the applications available on it. We are the infrastructure; the compute is a service. It enables ISVs to offer their apps as a service. Once these apps are there, that's when the users really get to engage."

While I agree that the key to adoption are useable apps, why would anyone want to contract for a service they generally already own, and if they don't it can be had fairly cheap with the potential of a return on that investment. Witness Salesforce.com's tremendous financial performance -- would any other would be 'software as a service' ISV turn over the hosting of the services to a third party? Hasn't Salesforce.com proved out that the hosting and integration is as much of a revenue stream as the actual service itself?

The fact that Sun is cultivating application development for the Grid is also further indication of what enterprise Grid analysts have been pointing out for some time now -- that the mainstream enterprise Grid apps are still M.I.A. But cultivating by dangling a carrot and ever hopeful optimism ain't gonna' make it so. If Sun wants this thing to fly they need to take the bull by the horns and "Carpe Gridem."

I've heard it said by others and repeated it myself. The killer app for Financial Services, a vertical market that has traditionally been the most pro Grid is MS Excel. Doesn't Sun own Star Office, which includes Calc, a MS Excel compatible spreadsheet? Gridify that and I think you've got something. I really do like Sun Microsystems, so they can have that idea for free.

I believe I've said this before, so forgive me if I repeat myself, but what if Henry Ford decided to build roads instead of cars, and just left the car building up to someone else? That's sort of where enterprise Grid is today -- there's been a ton of activity and involvement in building the underlying infrastructure, but no one is coming to the party with the apps that are uniquely equipped to take advantage of this new performance. Party time is over, it's time to buckle down and start producing those apps.