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Slowly but surely... it's coming
Today's enterprise networks are complicated. Servers, routers, bridges. Storage devices and storage networks. Cables, switches, controllers... and that's just the hardware. Computing vendors-and end-users-would like to make these sprawling networks a whole lot easier to run. One phrase sums up this activity: utility computing.
In an attempt to explain utility computing, many vendors and analysts use electricity or telephone analogies, likening a utility service approach to picking up the phone or switching on the lights-a simple action on the end-user's part, carried out at will. Behind the scenes what's happening is greatly complex, but the end-user is shielded from complexity.
But Sun's Tony Siress, senior director of Advanced Services, doesn't like the usual electrical grid analogy for utility computing. "Electricity is a bad example," he said at a recent expo. It's more, he said, like a taxi. "Taxi cabs are a good example of a fully outsourced piece of infrastructure, and they're the right approach in some situations. The trick is understanding the mix of approaches that delivers the highest value and the least amount of risk to you."
In its widest meaning, utility computing refers to the practice of automatically matching centralized resources to an application's demands, then charging the business unit for usage. There is no single utility computing tool to accomplish this -and in some camps, utility computing is more a philosophy or management approach than it is a software or hardware tool. HP's Mark Linesch, VP of Adaptive Enterprise Programs, put it as well as anybody: "It's not about a big new technology. It's about establishing a tighter, more dynamic link between the business and its IT infrastructure."
Utility computing is the idea of keeping it simple by buying software, hardware and infrastructure that make computer resources...