It's a great day! It was just announced that the Sun Grid Compute Utility is open to the public.

As a software quality engineer for a number of advanced technologies for distributed systems, I can't think of a better test bed for qualifying my distributed applications! Just think of all the mundane things I don't need to do anymore...

• I don't need to submit and wait for large purchase order approvals
• I don't need to order, receive, or track test equipment assets
• I don't need to install and patch operating systems on that test equipment
• I don't need to troubleshoot problems or service test equipment
• I don't need to manage power, a/c, or space requirements for test equipment

In a matter of a couple hours or less, I can have access to hundreds of CPUs. Obtaining resources for meaningful stress tests, performance tests -- even unit tests -- have never been so quick and easy!

Granted, it's not as simple as just uploading my application-under-test, my JUnit test suites, and letting it rip...but stay tuned! Something might be coming to make it just that easy...