Sun Microsystems showcased the Sun Open Cloud Platform, the company's open cloud computing infrastructure, powered by industry-leading software technologies from Sun, including Java, MySQL, OpenSolaris and Open Storage. Signaling a massive opportunity to open the world's nascent cloud market, Sun also outlined that a core element of its strategy is to offer public clouds and previewed plans to launch the Sun Cloud, its first public cloud service targeted at developers, students and startups. Both are key elements in Sun's strategy to bring openness and interoperability to the cloud computing market.

Sun also announced the release of a core set of Open APIs, unveiled broad partner support for its cloud platform and demonstrated innovative features of the Sun Cloud. Sun is opening its cloud APIs for public review and comment, so that others building public and private clouds can easily design them for compatibility with the Sun Cloud. Sun's Cloud API specifications are published under the Creative Commons license, which essentially allows anyone to use them in any way. Developers will be able to deploy applications to the Sun Cloud immediately by leveraging pre-packaged VMIs (virtual machine images) of Sun's open source software.

Sun envisions a world of many clouds - public and private - that are open and interoperable. With the Sun Open Cloud Platform, Sun is driving a paradigm shift away from proprietary clouds that limit choice and lock in customers toward a world of open and interoperable clouds. Leveraging the best in world-class open source technologies, the Sun Open Cloud Platform brings together Java, MySQL, OpenSolaris and Open Storage. Based on innovative designs from a company with a rich history in network computing and Internet infrastructure, the Sun Open Cloud Platform is ideal for developers who value openness, flexibility and ease of use.

"Sun's approach to cloud computing blends our expertise in developing open source software and communities with unique design innovation. Sun's Open Cloud platform is the first step in delivering on our vision of a world that has many clouds that are both open and interoperable," said Dave Douglas, Senior Vice President, Cloud Computing, Sun Microsystems. "Our cloud architecture empowers developers with the expanded interoperability and freedom of choice they need to easily take advantage of the agility, efficiency and cost benefits of cloud computing."

Sun Cloud - Datacenter in the Cloud
At the core of the Sun Cloud will be the first two services - Sun Cloud Storage Service and Sun Cloud Compute Service - which will be available this summer. Customers will be able to take advantage of the combined benefits of open source and cloud computing via the Sun Cloud to accelerate the delivery of new applications, reducing overall risk and quickly scaling compute and storage capacity up and down to meet demand. Sun is leveraging its extensive portfolio of products, unparalleled world-class professional services and extensive expertise in building open communities and partner ecosystems to deliver the Sun Cloud. Sun will also take the technologies and architectural blueprints developed for the Sun Cloud and make them available to customers building their own clouds, ensuring interoperability among clouds.

Sun is leveraging several technologies to make its Sun Cloud incredibly easy to use - from deploying applications to provisioning resources. At the core of the Sun Cloud Compute Service are the Virtual Data Center (VDC) capabilities acquired in Sun's purchase of Q-layer in January 2009, which provide everything an individual or team of developers needs to build and operate a datacenter in the cloud. The VDC provides a unified, integrated interface to stage an application running on any operating system within a cloud, including OpenSolaris, Linux or Windows. It features a drag-and-drop method, in addition to APIs and a command line interface for provisioning compute, storage and networking resources via any Web browser. The Sun Cloud Storage Service supports WebDAV protocols for easy file access and object store APIs that are compatible with Amazon's S3 APIs.

Cloud Partner Ecosystem
Sun announced that leading partners and key advocates for cloud standards are supporting its goal to deliver an open cloud platform. It will help ensure that developers have a robust ecosystem of applications and services to speed the creation and deployment of cloud-enabled applications and to simplify management. Cloud Foundry, RightScale and Zmanda are three of the many cloud application providers, cloud management solution providers, Service Providers and cloud consulting companies partnering with Sun. Eucalyptus, an open source infrastructure for implementing cloud computing, is also supporting Sun's approach to drive standards-based, open source cloud platforms and applications, enabling users to integrate with other platforms and services.

• Introducing the Open Cloud Manifesto