The Metaphor … continued

The cable TV metaphor I introduced a couple of weeks back (in this post) has been extremely helpful in explaining the benefits of Utility Computing – along with the cost and support structures. As such, I thought it would be worthwhile to explore this a little further – with some more concrete examples. For these examples, I will use the offerings from Hoolipot to illustrate how this works:

Cable Television	Package	Utility Computing
Basic Cable Limited Basic Starter	Basic Business	Email Word processing Spreadsheets Presentation Calendaring Webpage creation Instant messaging Video sharing Web and message security
Expanded Basic Digital Preferred Premium Channels	Enhanced Business	Basic Business plus: Small business accounting capabilities Online payment (credit/debit card capabilities) Online Payroll
Sports Package Movie Channels Cable Latino	Specialized	Either Basic or Enhanced Business plus your own specialized business applications. These applications might be specific to your vertical or they may be custom built applications that you use to run your business.
Pay-per-view	On Demand	Applications required for short-term use only. This may include marketing, design or CRM tools

As you can see, the offerings line up extremely well – and you can even include the use of “pay-per-view” applications which may only be required on a temporary basis.You can even use this metaphor to answer a question I saw posed during the week about the software vendors, and where they will fit in this new model. The software vendors will be the “TV networks” in this model. They will continue to produce content (in the same way that ABC, CBS and HBO do) which will be “broadcast” to customers who have “subscribed” to their “channels”. Some software vendors will refuse to make this transition – possibly to their detriment.

Is this description in line with how you view Utility Computing? I would love to hear your thoughts on this!