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Utility computing (also known as cloud computing or on demand computing) is the packaging of computing resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a physical public utility (such as water or natural gas). This system has the advantage of a low or no initial cost to acquire hardware; instead, computational resources are essentially rented. Customers with very large computations or a sudden peak in demand can also avoid the delays that would result from physically acquiring and assembling a large number of computers.

Conventional Internet hosting services have the capabilty to quickly arrange for the rental of individual servers, for example to provision a bank of web servers to accomodate a sudden surge in traffic to a web site.

"Utility computing" usually envisions some form of virtualization so that the amount of storage or computing power available is considerably larger than that of a single time-sharing computer. Multiple servers are used on the "back end" to make this possible. These might be a dedicated computer cluster specifically built for the purpose of being rented out, or even an under-utilized supercomputer. The technique of running a single calculation on multiple computers is known as distributed computing.

The term "grid computing" is often used to describe a particular form of distributed computing, where the supporting nodes are geographically distributed or cross administrative domains. To provide utility computing services, a company can "bundle" the resources of members of the public for sale, who might be paid with a portion of the revenue from clients.

The definition of "utility computing" is sometimes extended to specialized tasks, such as web services.

History

Utility computing is not a new concept but has a long history. It was first described as:

If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future, then computing may someday be organized as a public utility just as the telephone system is a public utility... The computer utility could become the basis of a new and important industry.
— John McCarthy, MIT Centennial in 1961

IBM conducted this kind of business offering computing power and database storage to big banks from its world wide data centers. As Intel increased the desktop power, the computer architecture has gone through terminal/mainframe, client/server, browser/middleware. Recently, it was re-initiated by Sun offering the Sun Grid service to consumers in 2000. InsynQ ([1]), Inc. launched utility computing, [on-demand] applications, and desktop hosting services in 1997 using HP eqipment. HP introduced the Utility Data Center in 2001. Since 2000 many important computing companies have entered the market, but there have also been smaller organizations that have used utility computing. Some of these organizations use utility computing to help offset the cost of their own hardware, others use it to share the cost of resources within organizations. In 1999, InsynQ launched [e-Accounting], focusing on providing Intuit's QuickBooks accounting products as on-demand application services. In December 2005, Alexa launched Alexa Web Search Platform, a Web search building tool for which the underlying power is utility computing. Alexa charges users for storage, utilization, etc. There is space in the market for specific industries and applications as well as other niche applications powered by utility computing. For example, PolyServe Inc. offers a clustered file system based on commodity server and storage hardare that creates highly available utility computing environments for mission-critical applications including Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases, as well as workload optimized solutions specifically tuned for bulk storage, high-performance computing, vertical industries such as financial services, seismic processing, and content serving. The Database Utility and File Serving Utility enable IT organizations to independently add servers or storage as needed, retask workloads to different hardware, and maintain the environment without disruption.

References

External links

Technical documents

Australian GRIDS Lab's Report on - Utility Computing and Global Grids

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-'''Utility computing''' (also known as '''Cloud computing''') is a [[computing]] method that allows users to run their own programs on one or more servers as needed.  Utility computing generally utilizes some form of [[virtualization]] so the number of "servers" being used may be different from the actual number of physical computers being used.  This allows users to perform high performance computing they would not otherwise be able to accomplish without a high personal investment in computer hardware.  They simply pay for the computer time and resources used.
+'''Utility computing''' (also known as '''cloud computing''' or '''on demand computing''') is the packaging of [[computing]] resources, such as computation and storage, as a metered service similar to a physical [[public utility]] (such as [[water]] or [[natural gas]]).  This system has the advantage of a low or no initial cost to acquire hardware; instead, computational resources are essentially rented.  Customers with very large computations or a sudden peak in demand can also avoid the delays that would result from physically acquiring and assembling a large number of computers.
-This is different with the conventional computing model in that customers do not have to invest in owning (peak need) resources anymore, but only are billed for the actual use of resources. As the utility computing provider can spread the customers' variance in resource needs, the utilization of the resources can be optimized.
+Conventional [[Internet hosting service]]s have the capabilty to quickly arrange for the rental of individual servers, for example to provision a bank of [[web server]]s to accomodate a sudden surge in traffic to a web site.
-This is comparable to the use of electricity, gas, and most other utilities, hence the name utility computing.
+"Utility computing" usually envisions some form of [[virtualization]] so that the amount of storage or computing power available is considerably larger than that of a single [[time-sharing]] computer.  Multiple servers are used on the "back end" to make this possible.  These might be a dedicated [[computer cluster]] specifically built for the purpose of being rented out, or even an under-utilized [[supercomputer]].  The technique of running a single calculation on multiple computers is known as [[distributed computing]].
-As the Utility Computing service is based on usage, computing resources are metered and the user charged on that basis.  Utility computing is sometimes also called '''On Demand Computing'''.
+The term "[[grid computing]]" is often used to describe a particular form of distributed computing, where the supporting nodes are geographically distributed or cross [[administrative domain]]s.  To provide utility computing services, a company can "bundle" the resources of members of the public for sale, who might be paid with a portion of the revenue from clients.
-== Comparisons to other computing methods ==
-=== Time-sharing ===
-Utility computing is similar to time-sharing in that it allows users to perform their programs or computation problems on someone elses computers.  Users are not directly sharing the resources of a single machine, but are instead using many machines at once.  Time-sharing systems sometimes had resource contention where a user with a large project may cause others users projects to become slow or unresponsive.  This problem may still happen with utility computing, but it is generally not an issue since there are so many more machines and computing power available to be shared among the users.
-=== Grid Computing ===
-Grid computing is very closely related to utility computing, the main difference is that grid computing define the technical implementation of utility computing - grid of computers.
-=== Distributed Computing ===
-Distributed computing projects such as the Gene Folding project or SETI@Home work by having specialized programs work together on the same project.  Each machine is independent of the others and work is generally co-ordinated by a central server which controls the work done by all the others.  Utility computing does not necessarily have any central server to co-ordinate the work done by the different machines.  Most distributed computing projects are also run by strangers who download the client software to offer their computers spare cycles to the project.  Utility computing only runs software on their own collection of servers.
-=== Cluster Computing ===
-A cluster involves making many computers work together as if they were a single computer, with shared memory, storage as so on.  The users program may scale across the all the computers but appear as if it's running on a single large computer.
+The definition of "utility computing" is sometimes extended to specialized tasks, such as [[web service]]s.
 == History ==
+{{NPOV}}
 Utility computing is not a new concept but has a long history. It was first described as:
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 IBM conducted this kind of business offering computing power and database storage to big banks from its world wide data centers. As Intel increased the desktop power, the computer architecture has gone through terminal/mainframe, client/server, browser/middleware. Recently, it was re-initiated by Sun offering the [[Sun Grid]] service to consumers in 2000.  InsynQ ([http://www.insynq.com]), Inc. launched utility computing, [on-demand] applications, and desktop hosting services in 1997 using HP eqipment. HP introduced the Utility Data Center in 2001. Since 2000 many important computing companies have entered the market, but there have also been smaller organizations that have used utility computing. Some of these organizations use utility computing to help offset the cost of their own hardware, others use it to share the cost of resources within organizations. In 1999, InsynQ launched [e-Accounting], focusing on providing Intuit's QuickBooks accounting products as on-demand application services. In December 2005, [[Alexa]] launched Alexa Web Search Platform, a Web search building tool for which the underlying power is utility computing. Alexa charges users for storage, utilization, etc. There is space in the market for specific industries and applications as well as other niche applications powered by utility computing. For example, [http://www.polyserve.com/index.php PolyServe Inc.] offers a [[clustered file system]] based on commodity server and storage hardare that creates highly available utility computing environments for mission-critical applications including Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases, as well as workload optimized solutions specifically tuned for bulk storage, high-performance computing, vertical industries such as financial services, seismic processing, and content serving. The Database Utility and File Serving Utility enable IT organizations to independently add servers or storage as needed, retask workloads to different hardware, and maintain the environment without disruption.
+==References==
-== Enabling Utility Computing ==
+<references />
+== See also ==
-High Performance Computing(HPC) organizations have multiple options for enabling utility computing at their own organizations. Software solutions include:
+* [[Edge computing]]
+{{Cleanup-spam}}
+===Software===
 * [http://www.polyserve.com/ PolyServe's] [http://www.polyserve.com/sql_server_consolidation.php Database Utility] and [http://www.polyserve.com/optimized_file_serving.php File Serving Utility]
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 * [[Enomalism]] [http://www.enomalism.com/features/elastic-computing-platform/ Elastic Computing Platform]
+===Services===
-Similarly, Utility Computing is available in the form of pay-as-you-go hosting services for developers - these differ from most offerings in that there is no fixed monthly fee:
 * [[Amazon S3]] - Bulk storage and bandwidth for static content
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 * [http://www.distributedpotential.com Distributed Potential] Pay-Per-Use Grid Computing Capacity
 * [http://www.dell.com Dell Inc.] have a specific Cloud Computing Solution through their Datacenter Solutions Division
-== See also ==
-* [[Edge computing]]
 == External links ==