March Issue of the Taos Newsletter: Utility Computing

Message from Taos Founder and CEO, Ric Urrutia, and Co-Founder, Alexis Tatarsky

Utility Computing is one of today's most bandied about futuristic buzzwords, and we devote this issue of IT Intelligence to shedding some light the subject. We are delighted to share with you:

• an insightful interview we conducted with Joe Sura, the Vice President of I.T. at nVIDIA
• an example case study of how one of our customers is approaching Utility Computing
• An insightful article, "Convergence: The Next 10 Years" by Harry Quackenboss, the President and CEO of 3UP Systems

What exactly Utility Computing means depends on who you ask, but it describes a convergence of technologies which promises to elevate the focus of IT above the nuts & bolts of how computation and storage are delivered - networks, protocols, hardware, fabrics, etc. In a Utility Computing environment, computation, communication, and storage will be available as needed - flexibly; where & when & in whatever quantity one is willing to pay for, just by plugging in - like electricity from a wall socket.

A primary implication of this has to do with outsourcing. To the extent that computational resources truly become a utility, the only parameters to a buying decision are price & quality of service. It really doesn't matter (to the consumer) whether one's electricity was generated by coal or hydroelectric. Similarly, it doesn't matter what sort of storage fabric or CPU or operating system is behind the plug-in IT utility. It's clear that in this paradigm, much computational service would be provided by "service providers" of one sort or another. Few businesses today have their own water-wheel out back powering the plant. For one thing, electricity generation isn't a core competency of a typical business. In the ideal Utility Computing world, IT Service generation will come to be viewed the same way. Secondly, there are economies of scale to generating electricity for many customers, and the sophistication of infrastructure behind it can be far greater. Again, few businesses would find it economical to generate their own power. In the Utility Computing future, the same might be said about providing computation, data storage, or network infrastructure.

That, at least, is the theory. Between here and there are many steps: this is a revolution that is to be arrived at by evolution. Intermediate elements of the solution will be incrementally adopted by IT organizations today and in the near future. Blade servers, for instance, provide a scalable amount of server power in one's own data center. It's not quite "computation on demand", but it is a step in that direction.

Elements of the ultimate solution - standardization of utility protocols, for instance - are under intense development by groups like the Distributed Management Task Force (www.dtmf.org) and their Utility Computing Working Group, as well as industry groups like the Data Center Markup Language Organization (www.dcml.org) which is developing standards so that hardware from many vendors can be managed flexibly.

Among the key technologies emerging to support Utility Computing are Grids, which provide pools of servers and storage, and standardized server management protocols - with layers of abstraction that provide virtual servers of any particular scale and flavor. The Global Grid Forum (www.gridforum.org) is busy developing the standards for how such pools of IT resource might work together.

In this issue of the Taos Newsletter, IT Intelligence, we're delighted to share an interview we conducted on the topic of Utility Computing with Joe Sura, the Vice President of I.T. of nVIDIA. As a world-wide leader in visual processing solutions, you can imagine the computational resources Sura coordinates. In this insightful and open conversation, Mr. Sura shares his perspectives on what's possible today, and where the technology is headed.

Another perspective comes through an article by Harry Quackenboss, the CEO of 3UP Systems, based on a talk he delivered at Taos last month. 3UP Systems is a vendor of innovative Blade servers which incorporate not only processors, but storage and switching in the same chassis - improving the options for remote management & high availability. Quackenboss discusses not only the emerging technologies, but also the implications for IT organizations today - both in adopting new technology, and in structuring themselves organizationally to be well prepared for the future.

And this month's Case Study discusses a large financial institution which engaged Taos to assist in exploring a flexible information architecture to distribute computing resources across a number of related departments. Among technologies utilized were blades, server consolidations, Oracle 9i RAC Cluster, and enterprise versions of Linux.

We hope you find these perspectives interesting and useful. As always, we welcome your feedback on the Newsletter, and suggestions for future topics. Taos is privileged to be involved in numerous exciting technology initiatives. If you think we might be a resource to your future projects, feel free to let us know that as well.

Sincerely,

Ric Urrutia
CEO & Co-Founder
Taos

Alexis Tatarsky
Co-Founder

"Because Excellence in IT is Economical"