A New Metaphor

Every time I (or almost anyone else) talks about Utility Computing, we usually use the electricity utility as a metaphor. Of course, there are many similarities with the growth of both industries, and the manner in which they impacted (or will impact) society as a whole. In Nicholas Carr’s excellent book “The Big Switch” he spends almost half his time explaining the history of the electricity industry, and how it grew across America. Its a really interesting story, and one that clearly demonstrates how something once considered a private resource became a public utility, offered to industry at a fraction of the cost that it was costing them when they were producing it themselves.

So for comparisons about the development of the industry, its actually a really good metaphor. But for people trying to visualize what Utility Computing will actually mean to them on a day-to-day basis, it falls a little flat. You see, the problem with electricity (as a metaphor) is that it is pretty much always the same. Anyplace that you find a standard power socket, you will find the same thing coming out of it – 110v AC @ 50Hz – and that really doesn’t change. And while that’s great for owners of electrical appliances, its less helpful when trying to explain how Utility Computing might be used to support business. After all, every business relies on different computing applications, so providing exactly the same thing to everyone wouldn’t work. Hence the new metaphor.

My new metaphor for Utility Computing is Cable Television. I used this briefly in my last blog post, so the idea isn’t entirely new … but its only a few days old! So, lets compare the two utilities and consider the similarities:

Cable Television	Utility Computing
Initial offering is “free-to-air” – pay nothing, but get a few local commercial broadcasters	Initial offering is free applications – like the free version of Google Apps Standard, GMail, Hotmail, and so on
Next level offering is “Basic cable” – where you get a reasonable selection of channels at a low price	Next level offering is Google Apps Premier – giving you access to mail, calendaring, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, web pages and video – for a basic charge of $50 per employee per year
Additional, more specialized channels (movies, sports or special events) are available at extra cost	Additional, more specialized applications are available either from Utility Computing providers (like Hoolipot) or from some progressive software vendors
When your TV-watching needs change, you call your cable provider and you have access to your new channels (almost) immediately	When your business application needs change, you call your Utility Computing provider and you have access to your new applications immediately
Cable companies don’t care whether you watch their programming on a 5″ portable screen or a 60″ plasma HDTV	Utility Computing providers don’t care about the size of the business using the applications. You just pay for what you use.
If you need an extra channel for a short time (like a PPV sporting event), you only need to pay for it for a short time	If you need additional computing power for a short time (like a sales promotion or a seasonal business increase), you only need to pay for it for a short time
When you decide you no longer want your cable TV, you give back your cable box and you’re done.	When you decide you no longer want your Utility Computing applications, you turn them off and you’re done.
You get what you pay for – you pay for only what you need – and its instantly available	You get what you pay for – you pay for only what you need – and its instantly available

So – you can see the similarities … yes? Is this a better way of explaining Utility Computing? Please comment below, and let me know what you think!

Now Is The Time For Utility Computing

We’re in the middle of a pretty severe “economic downturn”. That’s what the politicians call it, anyway. People who have just lost their house/job/savings might be a little less optimistic. Either way, most people would agree that the “bubble” that we were all (apparently) living in in the late nineties has burst – its remnants fallen to the floor, trickled across the cold cement, down a rusty old sewer grate and become part of a much less palatable fluid.

So, with all this economic doom and gloom, people are arguing that now is not the time to introduce something as radical as Utility Computing. Surely in this financial environment, we should be battening down the hatches and securing our businesses to weather out the storm … rather than investing time and money into a new technology? Actually, precisely the opposite is true.

Now is the time that your business needs to:

1. Focus on your Core. Whatever the good/service is that you offer to your customers – focus on that. If you are a dentist, go out of your way to do the best possible job on your patients’ teeth. If you are an attorney, focus on winning cases for your clients. If you are a builder, build the finest houses for your customers. If something isn’t core to your business, work out how to get rid of it so that you can focus on the reason(s) that your customers come to you.
2. Do something different. Chugging along at the usual pace is NOT going to help you in an economic downturn. Your competition will be more hungry, and will actively target your customers. Sit on your hands and you will lose those customers. Your competitors are not doing the same old thing they have always done … and neither can you. Ben Franklin, Albert Einstein and Rita Mae Brown have all be attributed with the quote “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” – whoever said it, it’s timely advice.
3. Don’t take unconsidered risks … but take risks. Now is certainly not the time to be foolish about risk – but it IS the time to take risk. In fact, that’s your best route out of this mess. Doing something different is taking a risk, but doing something different that allows you to focus on your core … now that’s a smart risk to take.
4. Understand and embrace your customers. In order to focus on why your customers come to you, you have to know them. Knowing them means understanding why they came to you in the first place, and why they keep coming back. And of course, once you know them, you embrace them to keep them coming back, to bring you new business and to further understand them. Your customers are your business.
5. Do what you are good at doing. I know – this is the same as the first point, but its really important. Now is not the time to waste effort on non-core activities …

… which brings me back to the topic of Utility Computing. For most businesses, managing computer applications is non-core. Sure, you need to be able to access those applications to run your business, and you need to keep the information in those applications safe and secure – but why are you spending valuable customer time maintaining those applications?

A huge benefit of UC is that it removes the headache of computer maintenance from your list of responsibilities. In much the same way that you rely on the electricity to work when you plug in an appliance – or the phone to work when you lift the receiver – you can rely on UC to provide you with the business applications you need when you need them. Think of it like cable TV – you pay just for the channels that you need and that’s what gets served to you when you turn on your television. If your needs change, you call the cable company and you get a different set of channels – maybe more kids shows, or more movies – whatever you need at the time. UC is similar – it provides the applications your business needs when you need them. When your needs change, UC adjusts with you – without you having to worry about buying another server, more disk space or anything else.

Instead of installing another software upgrade, get a new customer. Instead of installing a bigger hard drive, embrace an existing customer. Instead of worrying about whether your backups are working, take some business from your competitors … and focus on your core.

Stop Clouding The Truth!

As I scour the web for the latest news on Utility Computing, I invariably come upon software/hardware vendors trying to cloud the truth (pun intended) and tell me that UC, SaaS and Cloud Computing are all the same thing. They are related, but are not the same.

All three of these technologies are going to have a significant impact on the software/hardware vendors – many of whom may even be forced out of business by one or more of them – and so I can completely understand why those vendors would want to shape your thinking around them … but let’s be perfectly clear:

Software as a Service (SaaS)   ≠   Cloud Computing ≠   Utility Computing

Let’s start with the topic closest to the hearts of the software vendors. Software as a Service (SaaS) is an alternative delivery method for software solutions. With SaaS, the customer doesn’t install the software on their own hardware, but instead accesses software “hosted” on other hardware (usually owned or controlled by the software vendor). SaaS has many benefits over traditional software delivery in that maintenance (software upgrades/patches) is usually managed by the vendor – taking a lot of the complexity out of owning a software package. SaaS also means that the customer doesn’t need to worry about storage or server hardware for the application – resulting in applications that can scale quickly and price themselves accordingly. SaaS applications are sometimes delivered using Cloud Computing, and if they are an example of a type of Utility Computing … but they are not the same thing.

How about Cloud Computing? This is probably the most hype-laden term of the three, and is being thrown around with gay abandon by the software and hardware vendors alike. The clearest and simplest way to think about Cloud Computing is to think of it as Hardware-as-a-Service. Cloud Computing is a “technology” that allows you to make use of servers and storage (often operating systems and applications too) that are “rented” to you on a pay-as-you-use basis. Use a lot of computational power for a short time … or a little for a long time, and the price adjusts automatically. Use more storage, or less storage and just pay for what you use. Cloud computing offers developers a way to build and test out new applications without having to invest in lots of machinery … and it offers business owners an alternative to buying their own hardware. Just rent it instead – and pay for what you need to use. If your needs change quickly, so can the hardware in your “cloud”. Cloud Computing is sometimes used to deliver SaaS applications, and its an important part of Utility Computing … but its not the same thing.

Utility Computing (UC) is the topic of this blog, and is the most important of the three technologies. Just like it sounds, UC is about the provision of computing resources as a utility. Plug an appliance into a socket and instantly have available to you the computing resources you need. The applications you need, the storage you require, the computational power you want – all from a hole in the wall. Utility Computing might use Cloud Computing as a way to access the hardware it requires to provide you with your service … and it might use applications that are created in a SaaS mode … but that’s not the point. UC is like the 110v power sockets in your home or office – you can plug anything into them and get the power you need. By comparison, SaaS is more like renting a power tool – its great for a single purpose, but you still need a bunch of other tools of your own. And then there’s Cloud Computing – that’s like the technology that the power station uses to provide you with the 110v in the first place. It’s important to them, but do you really care?

As David Berlind said in his post, “there are those businesses that can probably justify insourcing their infrastructure. But those businesses are fewer and farther between and if you ask me, sales in the SMB infrastructure channel are basically surviving on a myth: the myth that SMBs should be insourcing” … and that’s why the vendors are clouding the truth.

Utility Computing … why isn’t everybody doing it?

So, let’s start this off with some honesty. The name of this blog is just a little tongue-in-cheek. Of course IT will continue to exist … it will just be somewhere else (and strangely, it doesn’t matter where). Which means that it WON’T exist in the form of servers / hubs / switches / databases / hard drives sitting in YOUR back room. Instead, you will plug in your computer and your applications will be available.

No installations. No upgrades. No backups. No more IT.

How does that sound? A little far-fetched? Actually, you are probably using more Utility Computing now than you realize. When you upload your photos to Flickr, you are using their servers to store your photos. When you check your Gmail or Hotmail accounts, you are reading emails stored somewhere else, in an application running somewhere else. When you write a blog using WordPress (like this one), you are using their applications to store your blog and serve it to your readers. You don’t know where those applications are running, nor do you know where your data and photos are being stored – and it doesn’t matter. As long as your email/photos/blog is available when you need it, why WOULD you care? Do you know where the electricity you are using right now is being generated?

It seems to me that Utility Computing is one of the most revolutionary things to happen in the history of technology. Here we have an opportunity to change the world – in the same way that other utilities like electricity, rail transport and piped sewage have transformed our society in the past. None of those things changed the world through their invention NEARLY as much as they did through their transformation into utilities.

So … what do you think?