Tech visionaries have long imagined a future in which companies buy information technology services as they would electricity. Their idea: Ditch the server racks and replace them with a wall jack connected to unlimited, on-demand computing horsepower.
Until recently, however, most big companies didn't have a good economic reason for considering so-called "utility" computing services. Now, given the slender IT budgets and cost-cutting at many of those same companies, proponents say the concept is getting renewed attention.
|