Shifting to Utility Computing (page 1 of 4)

Even though technology's contributions have increased productivity and enabled ways of doing business that were unimaginable just a few years ago, the "computer department" was seen as a cost centre, charged with speeding and automating the tasks of other departments, but disconnected from the goals of its internal customers.

The achievements of many IT departments have been measured largely by technology advances deployed, hardware, software and networking, in an effort to keep pace with increasing demands from users and infrastructure alike.

While employees demand faster access, management requires real-time reporting capabilities, and new rich-media applications require more bandwidth, storage and processing power. The combination of these three forces has caused an unyielding growth in infrastructure, which IT must now manage.

This focus on providing the raw technology has often impeded the IT staff's ability to focus on business value. And thus, IT continues to be viewed as an expense, rather than a value, to many organisations.

Emergence of the IT Utility
Today, having the ability to fine-tune IT resources to meet the changing demands of business can be a critical tool in reducing expenses and saving time. To that end, turning IT into an internal utility service, much like water, power, or phone, can enhance flexibility as well as the user experience.

Just like traditional utilities are metered, delivered, and expected to be available without interruption, IT can now deliver applications, storage and security as utility services. By doing so, IT can help to achieve logical functional benefits including supporting user demands, new business processes, and continual growth.

The challenge for many is how to abstract the technology so users need not care which platform, storage device, or client workstation they use. Instead, users would focus on the business function they need to perform, and those functions would be enhanced by the delivery of supporting IT services.

Viewing IT as a utility also creates an environment that enhances the IT department's ability to charge back for these services on a usage basis, just as departments and organisations pay for conventional utility services. Users can demand different levels of service availability, and IT can offer "pay as you go" charge-back capabilities for those differing service-level agreements (SLAs).

A charge-back system could also be set up based on depth of solution. For example, storage that is synchronously replicated could be a "platinum" service; locally mirrored storage could be a "gold" service; and JBOD storage could be a "silver" service. Ultimately, delivering IT in a utility-like fashion gives IT departments the level of accountability needed to demonstrate to management value for services rendered.

Utility computing also offers internal benefits to the IT department itself. As IT becomes more closely aligned with the goals of individual business units, the ability to control costs and assets by allocating them to specific business departments or projects enables IT management to get a better handle on how dollars spent relate to the success of business tasks and projects.

Lastly, taking a utility view of the IT infrastructure can enable more flexibility in architecture, hardware and software deployed to achieve business goals. In other words, IT can move and expand differing pieces of its infrastructure as business needs change and grow.

Turning Data to Action
Now that the information economy has surpassed the manufacturing sector in gross revenues, the importance of having actionable information, not just raw data, has increased immeasurably.