Utility computing: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:23, 30 May 2017

Revision as of 10:57, 16 June 2017

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'''Utility computing''', or '''The Computer Utility''', is a service provisioning model in which a service provider makes computing resources and infrastructure management available to the customer as needed, and charges them for specific usage rather than a flat rate. Like other types of on-demand computing (such as grid computing), the utility model seeks to maximize the efficient use of resources and/or minimize associated costs. Utility is the packaging of [[Computational resource|computing resources]], such as computation, storage and services, as a metered service. This model has the advantage of a low or no initial cost to acquire computer resources; instead, [[computational resource]]s are essentially rented.

This repackaging of computing services became the foundation of the shift to "[[Code on demand|on demand]]" computing, [[software as a service]] and [[cloud computing]] models that further propagated the idea of computing, application and network as a service.

There was some initial skepticism about such a significant shift.<ref>{{citation | publisher=ZD Net | url=http://www.zdnet.com/news/on-demand-computing-what-are-the-odds/296135 | title=On-demand computing: What are the odds? | first= | last= | date=Nov 2002 | accessdate=Oct 2010}}</ref> However, the new model of computing caught on and eventually became mainstream.

IBM, HP and Microsoft were early leaders in the new field of utility computing, with their business units and researchers working on the architecture, payment and development challenges of the new computing model. Google, Amazon and others started to take the lead in 2008, as they established their own utility services for computing, storage and applications.

Utility computing can support grid computing which has the characteristic of very large computations or sudden peaks in demand which are supported via a large number of computers.

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{{cquote|If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future, then computing may someday be organized as a public utility just as the telephone system is a public utility... The computer utility could become the basis of a new and important industry.|author=[[John McCarthy (computer scientist)|John McCarthy]]|source=speaking at the MIT Centennial in 1961<ref>{{cite book|title=Architects of the Information Society, Thirty-Five Years of the Laboratory for Computer Science at MIT|editor1-first=Hal|editor1-last=Abelson|first1=Simson|last1=Garfinkel|isbn=978-0-262-07196-3|publisher=MIT Press|year=1999|page=1|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Fc7dkLGLKrcC&pg=PA1|___location=Cambridge}}</ref>}}

IBM and other mainframe providers conducted this kind of business in the following two decades, often referred to as time-sharing, offering computing power and database storage to banks and other large organizations from their world wideworldwide data centers. To facilitate this business model, mainframe operating systems evolved to include process control facilities, security, and user metering. The advent of mini computers changed this business model, by making computers affordable to almost all companies. As Intel and AMD increased the power of PC architecture servers with each new generation of processor, data centers became filled with thousands of servers.

In the late 90's utility computing re-surfaced. InsynQ, Inc. launched [on-demand] applications and desktop hosting services in 1997 using HP equipment. In 1998, HP set up the Utility Computing Division in Mountain View, CA, assigning former Bell Labs computer scientists to begin work on a computing power plant, incorporating multiple utilities to form a software stack. Services such as "IP billing-on-tap" were marketed. HP introduced the Utility Data Center in 2001. Sun announced the [[Sun Cloud]] service to consumers in 2000. In December 2005, [[Alexa Internet|Alexa]] launched Alexa Web Search Platform, a Web search building tool for which the underlying power is utility computing. Alexa charges users for storage, utilization, etc. There is space in the market for specific industries and applications as well as other niche applications powered by utility computing. For example, PolyServe Inc. offers a [[clustered file system]] based on commodity server and storage hardware that creates highly available utility computing environments for mission-critical applications including Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases, as well as workload optimized solutions specifically tuned for bulk storage, high-performance computing, vertical industries such as financial services, seismic processing, and content serving. The Database Utility and File Serving Utility enable IT organizations to independently add servers or storage as needed, retask workloads to different hardware, and maintain the environment without disruption.