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?