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It is easy to understand why the concept of utility computing has become latest trend in Information Technology. Analogous to traditional public utilities such as electric or water service, utility computing comprehends an essentially demand-based business model for the full range of IT infrastructure capabilities including servers, storage, databases and network resources.
While the concept is a compelling one, utility computing will not become a practical reality until IT managers can find answers to some fundamental, and as yet unresolved, questions. As long as companies utilize IT infrastructures based on servers, storage devices and networking systems from multiple vendors, the question of interoperability will remain a potential stumbling block. The solution will require comprehensive industry standards to ensure that systems work reliably across the heterogeneous environments found in real-world enterprise datacenters.
This article provides an overview of storage-one of the most important subsets of utility computing-including some important questions IT managers should ask before outsourcing their storage to a utility.
In Concept: Compelling Benefits
Within the utility computing model, the utility may provide services from the same infrastructure to multiple clients at the same time (Figure 1). According to its proponents, utility computing can provide customers with the cost benefits of a smoothly scalable 'pay-as-you-go' system that can meet changing business needs, without large capital expenditures. Subscriber companies can theoretically switch-on a given level of service, and then scale up or down, to meet their dynamically changing requirements.
All of this makes the promise of utility computing very compelling:
* Users would have unlimited access to computing resources across the globe
* Companies would pay only for the services they actually use, avoiding major up-front capital expenditures and eliminating the problem of underutilized and non-productive resources
* Enterprises would have the ability to quickly scale their IT infrastructure to meet changing business requirements, while focusing on their core business processes and areas of competency
* In theory, subscribers would be able to flexibly meet dynamic shifts in demand for computing and storage, without additional investments in hardware, software and systems integration.
While the concept of utility computing has recently garnered a great deal of press attention, executing on the promise may be difficult. This is due to the fact that utility computing is considerably more...