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Sun finally creating a cloud-computing business

Sun decides to peak into "the cloud," creating a separate cloud-computing business unit, but why now?

Dave Rosenberg Co-founder, MuleSource
Dave Rosenberg has more than 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to startup IPOs to open-source and cloud software companies. He is CEO and founder of Nodeable, co-founder of MuleSoft, and managing director for Hardy Way. He is an adviser to DataStax, IT Database, and Puppet Labs.
Dave Rosenberg

Gavin Clarke reports that Sun's nascent cloud/grid/whatever effort is being turned into a separate cloud business unit lead by Sun's chief sustainability officer, Dave Douglas.

Sun sort of had something with Project Caroline and they were early on the utility-computing bandwagon, but considering the massive dossier of software, hardware, and storage the company lays claim to, one would expect a lot more. In fact, I would argue that of all the BigCo vendors, Sun has the best chance of becoming a meaningful cloud vendor.

I do have to ask why Sun announced (leaked?) this today--just days after the joint initiative from HP, et al. and not at JavaOne just a few months ago. Despite my enthusiasm for Sun's efforts (which I really hope to do well), this is the typically weak marketing the company gets beat up for.

I've lamented the fact that Sun was missing the boat (blimp?) on the cloud for several months and have had zero discussion with anyone there about it. I've even gone as far as to say that we can't have platform-as-a-service without Java in the cloud.

Maybe someone will start reaching out to interested parties?