Server platforms Toolkit

Will utility computing reshape the way people do business?

Martin LaMonica CNET News.com

Published: 21 Jun 2005 12:20 BST

As a provocateur, he's very effective. But as a prognosticator, people are less convinced.

Business writer Nicholas Carr raised many hackles in the information technology industry when he published a piece titled "IT Doesn't Matter" in 2003.

His latest piece with a similarly extreme headline, "The End of Corporate Computing," reopens the discussion of utility computing — the notion that corporations subscribe to computing services over the Internet much as they purchase electricity.

Yet Carr's latest article, published this spring, failed to spark much industry soul-searching or a heated debate on the future of corporate computing.

IT executives queried by ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com agreed that hosted services and utility computing will become more common and that corporations will take advantage of new technologies, such as Web services, grid computing and virtualisation, to lower computing costs.

However, few executives envision a whole-scale transition to utility computing, even in the far-off future. None appeared to buy into Carr's assertion that the balance of power in the computing world could shift dramatically from technology infrastructure providers to Internet companies, such as Google or hosting companies.

For example, Charles Giancarlo, the chief technology officer of Cisco, downplayed the importance of utility computing scenarios. Like many others, Giancarlo said hosted services will become more important in certain situations but utility computing services will not be the norm in three to five years.

"We think [utility computing] makes sense for some small and medium-size businesses. But for large businesses, the decision to host applications outside or inside of the network depends on many different factors, including cost and network efficiency," said Giancarlo. "Some of the largest companies can run their own applications much cheaper and more efficiently than any utility computing provider."