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Cutting business costs through Utility Computing

Since its initial appearance over four decades ago, utility computing has adopted various positions in the technology and business hype cycles, accompanied by some degree of confusion over what services are available 'on tap' and what benefits they can offer. Industry analyst firm PA Consulting noted in 2008 that a sensible approach to the model was to be a "cautious early adopter" as behind the hype it is likely that utility computing can offer some real benefits to most enterprises."

"The key to the model's historical and future success is that it has the advantage of a very-low-to-zero hardware cost, and peaks and troughs in demand for resources can be dealt with on an ad hoc basis, without the physical need for the enterprise to add or remove kit itself. Instead, the hosting provider will be able to provision extra computing power to accommodate a surge in traffic to a website, for example, or meet a sudden demand for additional storage.