Will utility computing reshape the way people do business?
Published: 21 Jun 2005 12:20 BST
But private and small-scale power generators, which used direct current, were eventually displaced entirely by alternating current technology, which allowed utilities to send electricity over long distances, obviating the need for a local power plant and the people to run it.
To Carr, today's corporate data centres are the private power generators of old: inefficient, underutilised and too costly in the face of the network model of delivering IT services.
"As the technology matures and central distribution becomes possible, large-scale utility suppliers arise to displace the private providers. Although companies may take years to abandon their proprietary supply operations and all the sunk costs they represent, the savings offered by utilities eventually become too compelling to resist, even for the largest enterprises. Abandoning the old model becomes a competitive necessity," Carr wrote.
If technology and marketing investments are any indicator, many computing companies firmly agree that utility computing will become "too compelling to resist."
Starting in 2002 with the launch of IBM's On-Demand vision of more flexible computing, several vendors have gotten on the utility computing bandwagon. Sun used the name N1 to describe its data-centre software, and HP used the term Adaptive Enterprise.
However, initial efforts by both large and small technology providers — which are still in development — have primarily focused on infrastructure technology, rather than hosted services, to make corporate data centres more efficient.
Yet at the same time, there have been a growing number of Internet-delivered services aimed at corporations.
IBM offers hosted processing power and applications to companies, while Sun earlier this year launched its Sun Grid initiative where customers pay a flat-rate of $1 per hour per CPU, in a fee-for-service structure similar to those used by utility companies. Meanwhile, Salesforce.com and Google, which both deliver services via the Internet, were the two of the most high-profile stock-market entrants last year.
Chief electricity officer?
But while utility computing is an enticing idea, holding up the electricity industry as the model for how computing should evolve doesn't sit right with all IT executives.
Peter Lee, CEO of grid software company DataSynapse, said that Carr's conclusion that the combination of virtualisation, grid computing and Web services will result in utility computing is "100 percent spot-on". But he said the electricity industry analogy doesn't hold up entirely.
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