[nopzor]

Sun Grid was more about batch processing across many machines, rather than individual VMs, wasn't it?

Plenty of people in the web hosting industry offered competitive x86 linux instances or dedicated servers, way prior to 2006.

I think AMZN deserves credit for delivering a price compelling option that delivered (1) elasticity (per hour billing) and (2) automation (API, available in minutes), among other things.