The CTO of Cloud Computing at Sun Microsystems, Lew Tucker, and Sun's Sr. VP, Cloud Computing and Developer Platforms and Chief Sustainability Officer, Dave Douglas, were both speaking this morning in New York about "Communities and Clouds." Douglas, who is also keynoting at SYS-CON's upcoming 2nd International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo in New York (March 30-April 1), showcased critical components of Sun's cloud computing offering during his presentation.

Quoting Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, who always says that "Innovation loves a crisis," Douglas was upbeat about the state of play technologically.

Crisis also loves a community, he noted.

"Everyone's talking about clouds," Douglas declared, "but what it boils down to for developers are that they will bring a dramatically increased level of choice to developers, plus they will lower the time and cost barriers" to a great many things.

How does Sun view what's happening, the big picture? "First of all we think there are going to be many, many clouds," said Douglas. Sun believes, he said, that they have to be open and interoperable - "That's where the power and the scale of this begins to make sense."

The core of Sun's approach, he announced, is called the Sun Open Open Cloud platform. The company's Public Cloud will be the first example of its vision. The partner line-up, Douglas said, is very exciting.

Douglas then introduced Lew Tucker, CTO of Sun's Cloud group. He gave a sense of the components of Open Cloud.

The major pillars are the Sun Cloud Storage Service and Sun Cloud Compute Service , Tucker said. "Your own virtual data center in the cloud," he called it. He then demo'ed the Open Cloud Platform in action.

One of the classic uses of cloud storage is the backing up of data to the cloud (for disaster recovery). The CEO of one of the leaders in the open source backup space, Zmanda, took the stage to discuss storing data on the cloud on an open format. Back up to the cloud and backup of the cloud is where Zmanda excels, noted Chander Kant, CEO of Zmanda.

“Zmanda’s support for the Sun Cloud underscores our strong belief that cloud computing will prove to be of tremendous value – both strategically and monetarily - to enterprise customers,” Kant said.

At the end of the one-hour session, Tucker spoke of an emerging ecosystem of companies helping redefine the business and technology models around the cloud, including leading companies like RightScale, whose CEO Michael Crandell also spoke.

When’s It Going to Happen?
A controlled private beta will happen sometime in the summer, said Tucker, who encouraged developers to go to http://www.sun.com/cloud.

“The Cloud space just touches on so much of Sun’s history and culture,” Douglas said in conclusion. The Sun Public Cloud has been opened up to all Sun employees internally, he added.