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 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
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NOVEMBER 9, 2004
Putting Computing Power on Tap Running corporate servers is still nowhere near as easy as turning on a faucet. Now lots of companies are working hard to change that Some of mankind's greatest accomplishments have been all about eliminating complexity. Take water. For thousands of years, humans have been perfecting ways to let people easily grab a drink, regardless of how many miles of aqueducts, how many reservoirs, or how much water treatment are needed to make it possible. And then there's electricity. Inventing the light bulb was nice. But the truly miraculous creation is the gigantic infrastructure of power plants and grids that allows consumers to merely flip a switch to turn on that light bulb. But life isn't so easy for people who run computer networks. Chief technology officers aren't removed from the computing process. They still have to worry about the day-to-day intricacies of using technology. It's a thankless job burdened with considerable expenses. Companies around the world will spend $95 billion in 2004 just to maintain their server computers -- 80% more than they'll spend to actually buy servers over the entire year. Truth is, for all the high-tech world's advances, the simple task of assigning servers from one job to another takes a lot of grunt work. Imagine this scenario: An online promotion takes off at a retailing Web site, and its tech manager wants to assign more computing power to respond to a traffic spike of shoppers rushing to the site. "Today, it's about as easy as moving a family into a new house," says Jay Kidd, chief technology officer of Brocade Communications Systems (BRCD ). "It would probably take more than a day. And meanwhile, your customers are waiting." "SOMETHING THAT WORKS." Computer execs know that's a problem. Even during the dot-com bubble, visionaries like Sun Microsystems (SUNW ) CEO Scott McNealy and Netscape Communications co-founder Marc Andreessen -- now chairman of a small software company called Opsware (OPSW ) -- were talking about the need to make computer networks more like utility networks such as the power grid. While the industry has started to make progress in spots, it hasn't gone very far toward the ultimate goal of making computing equipment as easy to use as a light switch -- what has come to be known as "utility computing." "The [tech industry] needs to wise up to what's necessary to make utility computing a reality," says Andy Green, CEO of BT Global Services, a division of British Telecom. "What the customer needs is something that works." Strange that this is taking so long in an industry so famous for its innovation. When the electricity industry was being built in the late 1800s, it took about two decades for centralized utilities to come into vogue. And by the 1920s, electricity was ubiquitous in the U.S. In comparison, the modern computer industry looks downright stunted. If you consider that it got its real start with the invention of the integrated-circuit board in 1958, it has taken nearly 40 years to reach a point where many people are even talking about computer utilities. FOUR-LEGGED STOOL. The slow progress has plenty of reasons. To start, no single company does everything for tech buyers. Computer makers have created servers and management software designed to let them run more easily. The same goes for makers of data-storage gear, makers of software, and even the makers of computer networking equipment. "There's a holy war going on," says Jason Donahue, chief executive of software maker Meiosys, one of the many small startups trying to solve the utility computing problem. "All of these groups are developing [utility computing] technology, but there's nothing unifying it." Certainly, making computer networks run like a utility is a daunting task. In order for utility computing to work, servers, storage gear, networking equipment, and the software that manages it all have to work like four legs of a stool. If one leg isn't cooperating with the others, the whole thing doesn't work as well as it should. Analysts say a transition to true utility computing, where tech managers or even consumers can assign the right amount of computing power to a particular task whenever they want, could take another decade or more. Here's another scenario: A company that makes water boilers needs to find the best price on copper piping to fulfill a big order, and it needs to get the job done fast. The company starts by reassigning servers to run e-commerce software that checks into availability and price with various suppliers. That's just the start.
BW MALL
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