Sunday, May 24, 2015

Will as-a-service business models lead to utility computing?

Just like humanity evolved from each human family building the things they needed to networks of supply chains leading from natural resources to markets through which customers bought the things they need, software services is evolving from even enterprise developing its operational IT platform to "as-a-service" IT platform interconnecting supply chains of providers of specialised algorithms and sources of different types of data (internal and external). Just like electricity/broadband comes through a point in the wall, the computing each house/office needs will come off a point in the wall. Home/work based devices will exchange data/computing-agents with the point in the wall and provide the interface to use/configure the computing capability. We will get monthly bills for the data/computing resources used and pay them using the same. This is the utility computing destination we are headed towards.

Utility computing will need "as-a-service" customising/configuring the computing needs as well as "as-as-service" operational support. There are many ways in which these can evolve. There is a huge amount of financial wastage in the current way of building and managing the evolving software needs of enterprises despite there being a lot common in the needs of enterprises around the world. Industry level thought is needed. New community, industry, country, global IT institutions are needed as part of the global IT operational framework to support the global utility computing model. One can of course start distributed and converge later. If one looks carefully, the process is already underway. It is the software industry which is lagging in terms of the way it does things and the tools/offerings it  provides.

Why should there be multiple implementations of each algorithm/code-component within the Internet as connectivity and computing becomes cheap and reliable? Why can't code for specific algorithm/code-component be sourced as needed from central repository? Why do customers have to pay for setup and operations of new IT platforms - assemblies of such algorithms/code-component? Why can't they merely pay for their usage of services from the IT platform and expect a specific SLA for each service they use from it?

Things are moving towards this in substantial measure as ISV's seek to keep their product/services updated through better service oriented architectures. Enterprise IT platforms are beginning to get automatically updated with new versions of code components with minimum down time

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