Breaking the IT Hardware Spiral

A final aspect of utility computing is that a major capital investment is not necessarily a prerequisite for getting high levels of computing power. In fact, laying out large amounts of capital to buy needed computing capacity may in itself be obsolete soon.

Instead, you should be able to buy computing power the way you do electricity or water. If your needs spike up or drop down, you should be able to buy more or less in a given year or month as needed. Computing as a utility should foster the paradigms of pay by use, don't worry where the work is done, and it doesn't matter what kind of machine the work is done on so long as it is fast and accurate.

Most clients agree that this model will become increasingly attractive in the coming months or years. It helps lift IT departments out of the insane spiral of hardware obsolescence that afflicts both companies and home users alike. You've experienced this spiral of obsolescence if you've ever purchased a computer. By the time you buy and install it, you realize that it's almost obsolete! The answer to this is a system on which you can keep the interface, keyboard, and monitor you're comfortable with and stop worrying about hardware.

By taking this approach, you free up entire IT departments' spending cycle. The cycle of investing in new hardware every 2 to 3 years ends immediately. Instead, buying computing power is keyed to your demand, as you would purchase electrical power or water. If you think about the computing power as electricity idea, the analogy can be carried even further.

• The generation of electricity = Large enterprise-class cell-based systems such as HP's Superdome server

• The transportation of electricity = The Internet or a companies' intranet

• The distribution of electricity = The company's local area network on a site or campus

Your company becomes more a distribution point, the spigot for computing power that can be turned on or off according to need. It may not be long before companies can pay their computing bill in the same way they pay for other utilities today. And the idea is to bring this to thousands, hundred of thousands, and then millions of users who can also buy computing power as needed.