23 NOVEMBER, 2004 

Paying the rent

One of the oft-spoken goals of SOA is that it ends up as a true service, delivered to users in much the same way as gas or electricity is now. That is some way off, but Sun looks like it has decided to try out a small corner of that whole subscription, pay-as-you-go approach. Now users can rent out access to Sun Ray thin clients for desktop computing tasks, rather than buy the machines.

The Sun Ray products rely on central servers for computing horsepower and, though to date they have failed to dent the Windows and Linux desktop markets the early talk of a trend towards subscription-based, global computing resources has prompted the company to test the water to gauge interest.

According to Sun Chief Executive, Scott McNealy, the company is bringing utility computing to reality. Well, that is maybe stretching language a little far, as yet, but it is a step in the right direction. Sun Rays are little more than a screen, keyboard, mouse and digital identity card slot, with all the computing work left to a server. The company argues that they are more secure and less expensive to operate than conventional PCs, though this is, arguably, a classic `length of a piece of string’ point of discussion.

Long term, the company is pitching at the market for wholesaling systems, services and resources to business partners that handle utility computing sales at the retail level, and in the long term there will be considerable demand. It may, however, be a long wait.



• Home
  

 • Solutions Architect Email NewsWire

• Free copies of "Application Development Advisor" magazine
   

• Contact details
  

• HP offers compliance as part of the management

• The utility business model of the future

• Turning storage into content

• Will users beat a path to Sun's door?

• Relationship 1 – Plumtree and Fuego

• Gif aims at interoperability

• BEA shows service-specific trend

• WebSphere goes for the SMBs

• IBM to hold more hands

• Parts of the future

• Sonic looks for a fight

• Is technology muscling in? 

• Governance grows in importance 

• What's in a name 

• Change management grows up

• Sonic grows ESB line 

• Standing
sentry

• BEA formally eclipses

• ITIL-based change management

• Self-assessing your business

• BEA expected to join Eclipse effort

• New Microsoft SOA targets telcos

• Burton Group outlines security considerations for transformative technologies

• Ungoverned SOAs could be dangerous

• Blowing SOX off

• Is the SLA dead?

• Micromuse adds tools to measure business services

• Netsuite – a view of the future

• BEA goes applications-
specific

• BEA edges towards consultancy

• Progress starts to package SOA offerings

• Europe getting up to speed with SOA

• BMC aims to unify service and infrastructure

• Giving life to old dogs

• CICS – the oldie but goodie

• Oracle – SOA next year

• A rose by any other name

• HP pushes out to BSM and, ultimately, aggregation

• AmberPoint hinges on partners

• Visualising Web Services

• Licence skirmishing starts

• Japanese trio standardise messaging

• Microsoft aims to take the Initiative

• BEA’s critical domains

• Paying the rent

• Business is the key for users – says BEA

• Registering governance

• IBM’s new SOA curate’s egg?

• Cars give Blue Titan’s direction a lift

• Can packaging SOA short-circuit architecting?

• Troubled JSR 208 goes to early draft review

• "Meeting SLAs is now the important goal"

• Bring on the quality standards

• The ecosystem of integration

• Is BPM the new IDE?

• Cape Clear and Neon

• Seagull Software and PeopleSoft

• Amberpoint and Systinet

• BEA fills out the beehive

• Digital Evolution buys Flamenco Networks

• SOA hardware – does Intel's goal hold up?

• Sonic updates integration

• Visualising SOA's

• Balls, boats and SOA

• IBM buys more management

• Mobile client collaboration

• SOA management and identity

• IBM expand workspace to make development easier

• Adding to the 'add-on' market

• Deploying XML

• Do SOAs threaten developers?

• Getting a start on security

• Managing .Net development

• Some more about Oracle

• Nokia joins SOA and mobile

• New starter packs from IBM

• SOA requires old thinking to succeed

• Will Kitty Hawk give Sun a first flight in SOA?

• Here comes Oracle

• Actional spreads SOA management

• eBay extends access

• Multimap and Microsoft partnership





Get the Solutions Architect Email NewsWire sent to your inbox every week.
Sign-up here or
View an example
Get 6 FREE copies of "Application Development Advisor" magazine. Offer open to IT professionals based in the United Kingdom.
www.appdevadvisor.co.uk
Register to the RFID Today mailing list. Receive the magazine and be kept informed of the latest RFID news by email.
Join now…

ADA Communications, Charwell House,
Wilsom Road, Alton, Hampshire, GU34 2PP, UK.
Tel: +44 (0)1420 594200
www.adacom.co.uk

© Copyright 2001 - 2005 by ADA Communications Ltd. All rights reserved. Statements of opinion and fact are made on the responsibility of the authors alone and do not imply an opinion on the part of ADA Communications Ltd or the editorial staff. Registered in England No. 04843018