I need to get this out first and foremost. I do believe that cloud computing or similar is inevitable. It is coming. I am also a realist. I know perfectly well that there are some fairly significant impediments to it. The impediments are a mixture of technological deployment, and business models. Its not impossible to do this given sufficient money. But some of the dependencies are simply too pricey to enable rapid cloud adoption, and I don’t see this changing rapidly in the near term (next 3 years).

Way back in graduate school, my family was in town for my wedding. Back then, Detroit had a reputation … not a pretty one … for being the murder capital of the US. Sure made my folks happy I was going to grad school there. So while we were wandering around in Greektown right after a meal, we spent some time in Trappers alley, at a number of stores. One of the stores had a T-Shirt my older brother really seemed to enjoy.

Ok, looks like I was dead on right on some aspects, and likely pie in the sky with others. Here is where I was right. This acquisition was, and is, about Java and MySQL. From The Register yesterday: Yup. Makes sense. But also stated … … which they have to do to prevent Sun’s hardware sales from tanking pre-close. We know this. And they are going to keep making these noises up until the close.

I’ve mentioned rPath before, as it is the basis for OpenFiler, and other appliances. Now with the mad headlong rush into the misty vapors of cloud computing, they are rebranding as a cloud appliance provider. Their concept is great. Create a functional software appliance, run it everywhere. Thats not what i am going to complain about. Its about the implementation. [rant mode full on] Its always about the implementation. As the implementation is the thing that drives support.

So there I am waiting for my 3:30pm phone call. Working on a Delta-V for a partner. Get a call from the number 5618260072 Remember that number. This person claimed they were representing Hugh Downs production company and wanted to do a story. Obviously this person had no clue, was reading from a script, and didn’t have any research background on us. I was at least amused. One of their questions at the end got me thinking that this person wasn’t clueless, but was fishing for something.

From theNYT, we learn that they are being pushed to a Chapter 11 filing. This is needed, in order to cause a break on some of the really bad contracts and other business elements they have agreed to over the years. Chrysler is a consumer of HPC products. Rumor has it a large (effectively free/risk free) cluster was provided by one of the tier 1s in the last few months. Chrysler has been hammered by the economic downturn, and the effective absence of credit in the market.

96TB raw capacity, 5U high performance storage system with 64GB ram, 8 processor cores, 4x GbE, 2x 10GbE ports, dual hardware accelerated RAID cards, SSD boot drives. For well under $1000/TB. More information coming in the formal announcement this week.

As John West points out over at InsideHPC.com, the FAQ really didn’t live up to FAQ standards … very little was answered, and there are many more questions. But a pattern did emerge, that fundamentally suggests that we may have been (more) right (than we knew). This acquisition was about MySQL and Java. And other software bits. But no mention of Lustre, and even more important to a larger number of HPC sites, GridEngine.

* The Sun has set: acquired by Oracle after messing up IBM acquisition. Hardware and HPC probably gone. Its Java Larry wanted. [#](http://twitter.com/sijoe/statuses/1565006452) Powered by Twitter Tools.

See the PR. Oh my. Imagine one of several scenarios. Scenario 1: All other hardware vendors drop Oracle certification efforts and cease selling Oracle on their platforms as Oracle hasn’t stopped directly competing with them. Scenario 2: Sun hardware largely goes by-by, enmasse, so Oracle can focus upon the bits that make sense for its business, and not piss its partners off too badly. I am guessing it is going to wind up much closer to 2 than to 1.