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Utility Computing -- What Does It Mean to You? 40

Posted by Cliff from the cutting-out-the-buzz-and-trimming-the-hype dept.
lastpub asks: "With all the vendors out there touting the latest industry buzzword of 'Utility Computing', I'm curious to find out what developers and IT professionals actually think about what that means. Each vendor has it's own message, and some of them have very nebulous descriptions. When you hear the term 'Utility Computing', what do you think?"
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Utility Computing -- What Does It Mean to You? More

Utility Computing -- What Does It Mean to You?

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  • Yet Another (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) *
    "I'm curious to find out what developers and IT professionals..."

    IANAd&ITp. Why should that stop me? This is Slashdot.

    "When you hear the term 'Utility Computing', what do you think?"

    "Dot Com Gold Rush"
    "Metrosexual"
    "Virtual Storefront"
    "Macarena"
    "Electronic Village"
    "Disco"
    • Off topic my ass. When I think about the term "utility computing" I think about yet another fad term for yet another fad.

      Flamebait, OK, if you don't think sarcasm is called for. (I happen to believe it's appropriate). Off topic, no way.

    • What do I think?

      "More spin by the idiots in Marketing in an attempt to sell more crap."

      • "More spin by the idiots in Marketing in an attempt to sell more crap."

        That's pretty much what I meant.

        1. Utility Computing
        2. ?????
        3. Profit!

        And it will, while some newbies buy the line and the software, and by the time they've figured it out the marketoids will be back under their rock plotting the next bogousity.

  • Nothing it means nothing. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Deliveranc3 ( 629997 ) <deliverance@level4 . o rg> on Friday March 12, 2004 @02:47AM (#8540646) Journal
    That was a tough one.

  • We're not ready for Utility Computing yet. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @02:50AM (#8540668) Homepage
    What's the primary requirement of a utility? It has to work. If you turn the water faucet on, you expect to get water; if you plug a lamp into a wall socket, you expect electricity; when you pick up your phone, you expect to hear a dial tone.

    Computing simply hasn't reached that point. When people choose web hosting, they don't choose on the basis of how many dollars each GB of bandwidth costs; they choose on the basis of security, reliability, customer service, and generally reputation.

    Utility computing would be nice, but we're simply not ready yet.

    • Computing simply hasn't reached that point. When people choose web hosting, they don't choose on the basis of how many dollars each GB of bandwidth costs; they choose on the basis of security, reliability, customer service, and generally reputation.

      It is our (Developers, IT Professionals) fault that computing hasn't reached that point. Security and reliability should be a given. You don't pick a water company because of security and reliability, those are built in. A water company that doesn't have ten 9s o

    • Computing simply hasn't reached that point. When people choose web hosting, they don't choose on the basis of how many dollars each GB of bandwidth costs; they choose on the basis of security, reliability, customer service, and generally reputation

      It's not quite analogous. Utility computing means that management of capacity is transparent to the end user. Need more power? Just use it, and the datacentre's infrastructure management software will add resources from its reserve pool to your application autom

    • What's the primary requirement of a utility? It has to work. If you turn the water faucet on, you expect to get water; if you plug a lamp into a wall socket, you expect electricity; when you pick up your phone, you expect to hear a dial tone.

      Check out Softricity. [softricity.com]

      They're a combination of "Software" and "Electricity". It's not perfect yet, but they go a long way toward making computing painless by virtualizing the environment, so applications run in their own "sandbox" and have their own Registry a

  • Utility computing is so 1996 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Bombcar ( 16057 ) <racbmob@bo[ ]ar.com ['mbc' in gap]> on Friday March 12, 2004 @02:52AM (#8540677) Homepage Journal
    Utility computing for me is the HP 200LX.

    An entire 186 PC in a clamshell about the size of a checkbook and an inch thick. Runs MS-DOS 5.0, and has an entire keyboard and a numeric keypad.

    Includes a graphic calculator, Lotus 123, Quicken, etc. Best money I've ever spent, and one of the best things developed by HP. Still kicks modern PDA butt.

    And you can play old CGA games on it.

    See The Palmtop Site [palmtop.net] for more information.

    The real thing that made it useful for me is that it is a REAL computer that is small enough to take anywhere. And I can type about 20-40 WPM on it, which simply beats the heck out of Graffiti or whatever.

    Someday, maybe someone will build a newer one around a 486, but for now, this thing rocks!
    • Check out the Flipstart [vulcan.com]. Still in development, but they've given a demo with one, so it's not just vaporware.

      It's a complete, real computer.
      4 inches by 6 inches and 1 inch thick. Runs Windows XP (actual full version).

      Integrated 802.11g.
      5.6" 1024 by 600 pixel screen.
      Integrated 1.3 megapixel camera.
      USB 2.0
      Docking station provides access to optical drives and wired ethernet.
      1 GHz processor (I don't know what kind.)
      Some special software to access MP3s and e-mails without opening up the full screen.

      I don't
      • Sounds cool.

        Hopefully it can be made to get something near the 35 hours of battery life I get now.

        And that's off two AA batteries.

        But keep us informed!
        • Well, the website says one full day of operation in low-power mode (accessing e-mail, playing MP3s, and viewing your calendar from the grayscale display on the front of the machine).

          However, only 2-3 hours running Windows XP. Sorry. :)
          Maybe when hydrogen fuel cells become more prevalent you'll be able to get 35 hours off a battery while running a modern operating system.

          Also, there's a lot more you can do with 30 GB of hard drive space and a faster processor.
          • I know there's a lot more that can be done with the space, but I really like the instant on always available palmtop.

            It's just small enough to take everywhere, but still has many advantages (full keyboard, etc.).

            Hopefully I'll be able to find another one when this one dies......
      • Interesting item, not sure how practial it is. I really like the LID feature.

  • Domotics in other words [google.com]. Perhaps I'm way off but this is what the phrase makes me think of. I can't really figure why they've added "computing", but the utilities are pretty clear in that sense.

  • THIS time I will hold the football, Charlie Brown! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    "Utility Computing" is a bunch of salesmen claiming that although they have snowed people into buying over priced and useless buzzword compliance year after year after year, THIS time they are selling what the customer needs and wants, not what has the biggest commission.

    Yeah right.

  • Computing on demand (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    100% of my (for example) stock trading servers process stock txns. during the hours the NYSE is open, then when the market is closed, 50% of them reconfigure themselves and turn into customer billing systems until a few minutes before the market opens back up again, when the systems all revert back to processing stock trades. THIS IS ONLY AN EXAMPLE. The point is that a system can be re-purposed to meet demand for more computing power in another area. BTW, grid and utility computing are not the same thing.
  • When you hear the term 'Utility Computing', what do you think?"

    Natalie Portman. Naked and petrified. With grits being poured down the front of her pants.

    Ask a silly question...
  • A*, Hill-climbing, Current-Best. Perhaps too much Planning and Search coursework...

  • Scalable resources (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DrPepper ( 23664 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @05:58AM (#8541477)
    Nobody seems to have given a decent answer yet, so I'll give my two-cents worth.

    To me, utility computing is quite a generic term, but generally means computing resources on demand. It's the ability to vary the resources available to you within a very short space of time. Like the ability to just turn a tap on and off.

    There are various ways of delivering that; some companies allow you to install a machine with more processors than you need, but only pay for the ones you use. So you install a 32 node machine, but only pay for 16 processors. Later, as your demand increases, you can just turn on the extra processors. You could do the same with RAM, disc space etc. Obviously though you pay a premium for the convienience.

    Another way of deliverying this is through remote resources. You effectively outsource your computing resource; as you need more resources you phone up your supplier and they provide the additional resources from their hardware pool - already setup and ready to go.

    At the moment it seems to be of most interest to large data centres.

    • Although this topic may be dead by now, let me have my 2 cents:

      FTEC [fftechcenter.org] (formerly The Beatbox [thebeatbox.org]) has a system that is somewhat of a compromise:

      For $25 a month, you get access to the audio and video rooms (equipment, computers, etc.). For another $10 a month, you get your own hard drive, in a cartridge. There are 8 computers you can use this on (it's a small town), decent enough (2 ghz, 512 megs, geforce 4 or something). You walk in, grab your hard drive (which is kept there), slide it into a spare computer

  • Re:We're not (ever) ready for Utility Computing. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by G4from128k ( 686170 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @08:56AM (#8542207)
    What's the primary requirement of a utility? It has to work. If you turn the water faucet on, you expect to get water; if you plug a lamp into a wall socket, you expect electricity; when you pick up your phone, you expect to hear a dial tone.

    Exactly! But we will never reach this for three reasons.

    1. Moore's Law: Ever expanding functional performacne levels means that computing does not stablize and we will never reach the reliability levels that would earn the name "utility computing." The problem is that faster clock sppeds and more transistors/chip permits an ever expanding set of standards, features, applications, and designs. In contrast, the U.S. has been using 120 VAC, 60 Hz for a 100 years with no real changes, upgrades, version 2 specs, etc.

    2. Intercoupling of Devices & Applications: Unlike other utilties, computing elements are highly intercoupled through very complex interfaces. The "API" for electricity, water is simple -- what voltage/pressure and how much current/flow. Water and eletrical devices are mutually independent -- I don't have to upgrade all my lightbulbs when I get a new refrigerator. With traditional utilites, everything is truely plug and play because nothing interacts with anything else (with the minor exception of capacity limits). But with computing, each new feature, standard, operating system, and application has the potential to break other elements of my computing architecture. Until computing can get off the upgrade merry-go-round, it will not be a utility (see #1 for why that will not happen).

    3. Industry Structure: The computing industry is structured very differently from most utilties. The independence of computer chip makers, PC makers, OS makers, application makers, and peripheral makers drives incompatibilities and unpleasant interactions between devices. Traditional utilities were highly regulated, vertically integrated organizations (less true today because of deregulation). The Bell System could introduce new features (e.g., PBX systems or touch tone phones) because they owned the phone, the phone making factory, the wires, the switching, the trunk lines, everything. In computing, if you have a problem each vendor can blame a different vendor for the problem and nothing really gets fixed.


    I'm not suggesting that we repeal Moore's law, disconnect computers from each other, or regulate the industry. I'm only suggesting that computing is fundamentally different from the simple reliable utilties that "utility computing" would like to emulate.
    • The problem, I think, is really an issue of lack of vision combined with a kind of greediness. We really can obtain utility computing... for some kinds of task. For others it's more difficult, maybe impossible. Modularity is (must be, IMHO) the answer.

      The greediness I mention comes from the fact that it's difficult to get people to agree to a narrow (they'd call it "restrictive") interface, as they can always argue that you could "get more" (more speed, more close to the fundamental capability of the syst

      • The problem, I think, is really an issue of lack of vision combined with a kind of greediness. We really can obtain utility computing... for some kinds of task. For others it's more difficult, maybe impossible. Modularity is (must be, IMHO) the answer.

        Exactly! Modularity is the key to utility computing. And simple interfaces are the key to modularity. Very good points.

        The challenge is to define a very clear, very simple (= restrictive) standard and ensure that all elements (both hardware and softwar

  • Consider the meaning of "Utility" (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Friday March 12, 2004 @09:33AM (#8542402) Homepage Journal
    Which I'm sure most outfits pushing "utility computing" really don't want you to do. It can be construed in the way that most responders did, as 'something that's there, that you just use,' and I suspect that that's what companies are pushing.

    It can also be construed in the same cast as "public utility," like water and electricity. Public utilities are either publicly owned by governments, or privately owned and heavily regulated by Public Service Boards. I'm sure the companies aren't pushing for this.

    In general use, a utility is something so heavily used that its existence becomes 'assumed.' IMHO, the WORST thing that Microsoft has taught us is that you can have it both ways. For approaching two decades, Windows on PCs has become pretty much a 'utility', nearly always assumed to be there, with no oversight or regulation that a real 'utility' has. In essence, Microsoft has positioned themselves as a Gatekeeper to personal computing, and collects 'tax' on it.

    (Should utilities be regulated? Shouldn't the market set prices? Perhaps, but perhaps not when it's truly a 'utility'. Science fiction is full of stories of selling air on the moon at exhorbitant markups.)

    This lesson has not been lost on other companies, so now we have a general rush to become gatekeepers, to emulate the 'most successful American company.' This is BAD, for two reasons. In the first place, gatekeeping has worked for Microsoft in the short and middle terms, but is now showing cracks in its foundation.

    In the second place, gatekeeping is bad for society. In the gatekeeping model, companies try to own standards instead of cooperate on them. They don't seem to have learned the lesson of how CompuServe, AOL, Genie, The Source, and Prodigy weren't really making it until they surrendered to the open, non-owned Internet standards. As a result, everyone is squabbling over owning small pies rather than a piece of a gigantic pie, even when only a piece of a gigantic pie is far bigger than the small pie.

    Our national progress and innovation are being held back by an obsession with the gatekeeper model of business.
  • I don't think the word 'utility' makes much sense in the context of computing. A utility serves a narrowly defined and constant function. Information on the other hand is infinitely abstract and permutable.

    It's like saying self-serve firehose. If you have a general information processor, naturally you want to do GENERAL things with it. Something more along the lines of 'utility' computing would be a dedicated crypto chip or something you could dynamically plug in.

  • Hmm... (Score:2)

    by cr0sh ( 43134 )
    I wonder if they mean the case is this funky bright yellow with lots of dohicky plastic bits (bonus points if they are a shade of grey!) that don't do anything...

    Oh, right - they are saying *utility*, not *sport utility*...

  • Utilities generally supply a product, and have no inputs. This is a very bad analogy to use with computing.

    First, you have to reduce computation resources to commodities. They have to be uniform, and interchangable. Any unit of computation has to be a known quantity for all parties involved. This could be done for computation, provided that a sufficient security protocol is in place. Once this is done, the analogies start to fall in place.

    Computing project as construction project.

    • Design / Architect =
  • When I think of "utility" I generally think of something that serves one purpose and serves it well, but that may just be there in the background waiting most of the time when it's not needed.

    Think of a utility knife. It does one thing -- cut -- and does it rather well. It doesn't work very well as a screwdriver, a prybar, or a hammer.

    Utility appliances -- a washer washes, a dryer dries, a microwave heats, a vacuum cleaner sucks dirt off the floor. You don't have a general appliance that does all of this,

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