Unregulated IT - Beyond Utility Computing

The concept of buying an organization's computing needs on a pay-as-you-go basis is known as Utility Computing. In this model, organizations pay for the usage of applications, either to Information Technology (IT) departments or to an external technology vendor. This approach is similar to the way consumers pay for utility services like electricity, gas, and water. Though the Utility Computing concept has been around since the late 90s, it started becoming a reality with recent offerings from vendors including IBM, Sun, HP, and Veritas. However, the current products and services are primarily limited to infrastructural components such as network, storage, and server capacity. In this paper, we extend the Utility Computing model beyond the infrastructure layer to incorporate information, application, business process, and presentation layers. A true and completely " unregulated " Utility Computing can only be achieved if each of these layers becomes " virtual " to its neighboring layers. Although the current perception of today's Utility Computing is just a marketing spin on an outsourcing model, it is raising the awareness to change the mindset and the way IT departments think of themselves. Holding the business users as hostages of monopolist IT departments will push the business departments to demand the Next Big Thing from IT: Unregulated IT. INTRODUCTION TO UTILITY COMPUTING When we need electricity, we don't build power plants in our backyards. We use the power from the local utility company. This is the very essence of a utility model: standard service available when we need it, in the amount required, and paid-for as consumed.