{"id":1334,"date":"2008-03-17T21:04:10","date_gmt":"2008-03-18T04:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/?p=1334"},"modified":"2009-10-24T11:48:43","modified_gmt":"2009-10-24T18:48:43","slug":"utility-computing-train-is-coming-but-it-may-be-late-to-your-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/utility-computing-train-is-coming-but-it-may-be-late-to-your-station\/","title":{"rendered":"Utility Computing Train is Coming, But It May Be Late to Your Station"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Innovations, a website published by Ziff-Davis Enterprise from mid-2006 to mid-2009. Reprinted by permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

The move to utility or “cloud” computing shows every sign of reaching critical mass over the next couple of years.\u00a0 But it won’t be driven by corporate data centers.\u00a0 The momentum, instead, is coming from two factors that increasingly dictate the pace of innovation: startups and fear.<\/p>\n

In 1991, noted technology columnist Stewart Alsop wrote, “I predict that the last mainframe will be unplugged on 15 March 1996.”\u00a0 Yet as of last year, there were still 10,000 mainframes running worldwide<\/a>, according to IBM.\u00a0 Was Alsop wrong? Technically, yes, but the shift that he foresaw is happening.\u00a0 It’s just being driven by different factors than he expected.<\/p>\n

Technology innovation today follows a strikingly consistent pattern. New companies with no legacy base make the switch first while the people with the most to lose are the last ones to change. Instead, they jump on board when they discover that new technology addresses a significant pain point.<\/p>\n

Both forces are evident today in utility computing. Robert Scoble wrote persuasively last November about the \u201cserverless\u201d Internet company<\/a>. His comments were prompted by a meeting with the CEO of Mogulus<\/a>, a streaming video firm the claims not to own a single server.\u00a0 What interested me most about Scoble\u2019s remarks is the 65 comments that follow.\u00a0 Many are from other small companies that are building IT infrastructure from the ground up without servers.\u00a0 Some of these companies are offering high-bandwidth services on a very large scale, demonstrating scalability and reliability aren\u2019t a problem. In fact, any startup business today should look first at outsourcing its IT infrastructure before investing in a single square foot of computer room space.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, utility services are actually achieving critical mass in a corner of the mainstream corporate IT market: storage. Services like Amazon’s S3 now have well over 300,000 customers.\u00a0 EMC just joined the fray by launching an online backup service and hiring a top former Microsoft executive to lead its cloud computing initiative<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The storage industry has been a technology innovator recently because storage is a major pain point for many companies.\u00a0 With capacity requirements expanding at 30% to 50% annually, people are desperate to do something to manage that growth.<\/p>\n

The rapid adoption of utility computing seems likely to continue, but with a curve that looks like a landscape of the Himalayan mountains.\u00a0 In some segments of the market — like startups — utility infrastructures will become the status quo.\u00a0 In others — like corporate data centers — adoption will come only as the technology addresses specific pain points.<\/p>\n

This jagged adoption curve is why there’s so much debate today over the future of the cloud.\u00a0 Contrast Scoble\u2019s observations, for example, with a recent CIO Insight<\/em> article in which a CTO outlines his reservations about cloud computing<\/a> or a CIO Insight<\/em> reader forum where IT managers take issue with Nicholas Carr’s forecast<\/a> that IT will increasingly become a central utility.<\/p>\n

This debate is happening because the need for utility computing is not perceived to be compelling in all cases.\u00a0 Perhaps this is why Gartner predicts that early technology adopters will purchase 40% of their IT infrastructure is a service by 2011<\/a>. Which means that the other 60% will still be acquired conventionally.<\/p>\n

The utility computing train is coming but its arrival won\u2019t occur the same time for all organizations. Check your local schedule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Innovations, a website published by Ziff-Davis Enterprise from mid-2006 to mid-2009. Reprinted by permission. The move to utility or “cloud” computing shows every sign of reaching critical mass over the next couple of years.\u00a0 But it won’t be driven … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[162,170],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pTy95-lw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1334"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1334"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1706,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1334\/revisions\/1706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}