Grid Meter » Government Security Concerns Bog Down Sun's Grid Deployment

February 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Government Security Concerns Bog Down Sun's Grid Deployment

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According to a Bob McMillan article today, the U.S. government is stifling Sun's Grid deployments.

The lead quote by Jonathan Schwartz sounds the trailer for a bad action flick, but illustrates cultural hurdles that need to be overcome before Grid has a wide acceptance. This time however the perspective is from the outside looking in.

"Our servers are considered munitions by the federal government," Schwartz said. "So when we wanted to provision servers off of our computers to a global population, the federal government got involved and said, 'we'd like to know all the people who use this.'"

Sun Grid seems to be getting the double whammy and is being hit from the inside out as well in this battle of changing hearts and minds toward Grid deployment. The article points out an example of a potential customer that's started to get cold feet about doing things differently.

"Sun CEO Scott McNealy said that this kind of hesitation ultimately scuttled a Sun Grid deployment with an unnamed bank. 'The bank made so many security and compliance-related demands that Sun eventually walked away from the deal,' he said."

Sun's marketing and PR is generally pretty interesting but these particular events are a great example of what a knee-jerk topic security is, and how stubbornly a customer or big brother can tank a deployment with the "s" word.

Next week Grid Meter will be spotlighting some pretty compelling Grid security efforts underway today (in both commercial and research / science settings). If you have an interesting Grid security story to tell, drop me a note.

Posted by Greg Nawrocki on February 28, 2006 09:03 AM

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