Utility computing

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Utility computing is a business model whereby computer resources are provided on an on-demand and pay-per-use basis.

This is different with the conventional computing model in that customers do not have to invest in owning (peak need) resources anymore, but only are billed for the actual use of resources. As the utility computing provider can spread the customers' variance in resource needs, the utilization of the resources can be optimized. This is comparable to the use of electricity, gas, and most other utilities, hence the name utility computing.

As the Utility Computing service is based on usage, computing resources are metered and the user charged on that basis. Utility computing is sometimes also called On Demand Computing.

Utility computing is not a new concept but has a long history. It was first described as:

“ 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. „

—John McCarthy, MIT Centennial in 1961

IBM conducted this kind of business offering computing power and database storage to big banks from its world wide data centers. As Intel increased the desktop power, the computer architecture has gone through terminal/mainframe, client/server, browser/middleware. Recently, it was re-initiated by Sun offering the Sun Grid service to consumers in 2000. InsynQ ([1]), Inc. launched utility computing, [on-demand] applications, and desktop hosting services in 1997 using HP eqipment. HP introduced the Utility Data Center in 2001. Since 2000 many important computing companies have entered the market, but there have also been smaller organizations that have used utility computing. Some of these organizations use utility computing to help offset the cost of their own hardware, others use it to share the cost of resources within organizations. In 1999, InsynQ launched [e-Accounting], focusing on providing Intuit's QuickBooks accounting products as on-demand application services. In December 2005, 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 hardare 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.

HPC organizations have multiple options for enabling utility computing at their own organizations. Software solutions include:

Similarly, Utility Computing is available in the form of pay-as-you-go hosting services for developers - these differ from most offerings in that there is no fixed monthly fee:

  • Amazon S3 - Bulk storage and bandwidth for static content
  • Amazon EC2 - Pay by the hour CPU
  • NearlyFreeSpeech - Pay as you go web hosting for web pages, dynamic content, domains, DNS, etc
  • Sun Microsystems Sun Grid - Pay by the CPU hour
  • Strikeiron Web Services Marketplace - Pay per Web API call.
  • USi, an AT&T company - USiPinnacle - Pay-as-you-go enterprise applications
  • Zimki - Javascript based utility computing system. Pay by bandwidth, storage, and javascript operations.
  • ElasticLive Utility web hosting service based on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud
  • InsynQ utility computing services
  • e-Accounting online accounting solutions for on-demand enterprises
  • Distributed Potential Pay-Per-Use Grid Computing Capacity

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