Blue Skies Ahead for Utility Computing?

Last month, IBM unveiled its latest utility computing plans to an audience
in Shanghai, China, and captured the attention of the entire IT industry. The
company's "Blue
Cloud" portfolio promises to enable enterprises to tap into IBM's data
center capabilities via the Internet to satisfy their application and computing
needs.

Anyone with a memory of over five years will recall that IBM made similar promises
around 2002 that it has yet to fulfill. Will IBM be true to its word this time
around?

Back in 2002, IBM was pioneering concepts like autonomous and on-demand computing
and promoting Linux operating systems and Software-as-Service (IBM's version
of SaaS) in an effort to demonstrate to its customers that it understood the
changing nature of their business requirements.

Some of these ideas were in line with the initial hypothesis of Nicholas Carr's
writings that IT didn't matter because companies could increasingly leverage
commoditized computing power rather than build and maintain their own in-house
operations.

Yet, IBM drifted away from these ideas in favor of appealing to a future generation
of potential corporate workers with its Second Life initiative. Ironically,
just as IBM was abandoning its thought-leadership position in the utility computing
world to pursue avatars in Cyberspace, a widening assortment of new players
were ready to pick up the on-demand banner to make it a reality.

The consumer world became flooded with on-demand alternatives ranging from
Apple iTunes to YouTube videos, with Amazon and eBay in between. Google moved
beyond its popular search solution to create a new world of widgets and ready-to-use
apps that could satisfy the simple needs of casual users.

I've written on numerous occasions in this space about Salesforce.com's success
in giving corporate customers the on-demand applications they were seeking to
meet their corporate needs as well.

These offerings served as a proof point and stepping stone for many companies
who were ready to 'out-task' the burdens of hardware and software deployment
and support to a viable vendor so they could reap the benefits of their on-demand
system and application capabilities.

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