As part of our preparations for the upcoming New York utility computing conference in March next year, staff at UtilityComputing.com spend a great deal of time talking with industry executives about the rate of adoption of utility computing.

An encouraging pattern has emerged – namely that companies generally falling into one of three camps: “Early adopters,” who are already running evaluations and adopting the strategy. “Watchers” who have allocated a team to keep an eye on it but have not elevated it to their mainstream and “Laggards” – companies who, despite the best efforts of the combined marketing might of the major IT vendors and the IT and business press have not yet heard of it. Very few companies have opted to reject or ignore utility computing and there is a clear trend in favour of companies evaluating their position very carefully in all parts of the corporation – not just the IT department.

This pattern can be combined with some bullish statistics reported this week by Business Week. Compared to the same quarter a year earlier, aftertax profits for the 900 major companies on their Corporate Scoreboard shot up an astounding 41%. Coupled with an 11% rise in corporate capital spending and an impressive turn-around for Cisco’s revenue figures, the indicators of a sustainable economic revival are certainly there to be seen.

With Siebel’s purchase of UpShot confirmed and executives there excitedly describing the prospects for their CRMondemand model as “truly huge” (and early results do seem to back this up) it seems the tech sector finally has grounds to allow a hint of a smile to cross its face.

The last article in our series covering the legal aspects of utility computing outlines some innovative approaches that can be considered when budget constraints hinder the signing of a new deal. With a fair wind, these just might not be needed for 2004.

Mike Lee
Editor

Utility Computing Report

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Utility Computing: Creative deal-engineering can make your project fly
We have covered a number of legal sticking points in negotiating a Utility Computing contract over the past few weeks (e.g., Utility Computing: Any port in a storm? - 2003/10/24). Our final article in this series focuses on two special arrangements as examples that creative deal-shapers may want to employ within a Utility Computing deal. Such deal engineering is somewhat novel, but if done properly, it may be just what’s needed to make an expensive project fly. Click here for Full Article
[by Alan Steele-Nicholson and Peter Brudenall, Simmons & Simmons]

Review: Autonomic Computing Report by Grid Technology Partners
According to Gartner VP, Bob Hayward, the global research firm sees utility computing as one of the key strategies for 2004. They expect the market to continue to mature and expand - especially as companies are moving towards a purchasing cycle. As that takes place, independent reports - such as the one reviewed here - will be a vital tool to help executives make the right choice. Click here for Full Article
[by Michael Lee, Editor, Utility Computing]

UtilCompWorld 2004
23 - 24 March 2004 - New York

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Grid powered Excel sheets for financial services
Platform Computing, a developer of grid software, has announced the introduction of grid capability for Microsoft Excel. The new feature enables shared processing of compute-intensive Microsoft Excel spreadsheets by transparently distributing the calculations through Platform Symphony to any number of internal compute clusters.
[2003/11/11 UC Newsdesk]

New services and software for Adaptive Enterprise
HP has introduced over 40 new management services and software products for its Adaptive Enterprise strategy to help users integrate heterogeneous technologies, cut information technology operations costs and increasingly automate responsiveness to real-time business demands. Advance Transformer, Arab National Bank, Avaya, National Bureau of Statistics of China and Perdata have all seen business benefits from using adaptive management.
[2003/11/11 UC Newsdesk]

Sun's building blocks for grid
Sun Microsystems has announced the next phase of its grid computing strategy that will use "building blocks" to tailor grids to the specific needs of users. Sun's Grid Everywhere initiative is driven by its High Performance and Technical Computing group which supports the market that has led the way in Grid Computing.
[2003/11/11 UC Newsdesk]

EdgeControl manages on demand content and applications
Akamai Technologies, an on demand distributed computing platform for conducting e-business, has announced the availability of EdgeControl, a set of tools and services that aim to ease distribution and management of Internet applications and content.
[2003/11/10 UC Newsdesk]

Salesforce.com upgrades it's solution
Salesforce.com has announced sforce 2.0, a new version of the salesforce.com on-demand application server. sforce 2.0 is designed for creating, hosting and executing client/service applications. It allows developers to customize, integrate and extend the salesforce.com user interface, business logic and data model to support their specific business requirements.
[2003/11/10 UC Newsdesk]

VMware introduces new solution for Utility Computing
VMware, Inc., a developer of virtual infrastructure software for Intel-based systems, has introduced the VMware virtual infrastructure, a new set of computing capabilities designed specifically for the data center environment.
[2003/11/10 UC Newsdesk]

Siebel completes acquisition of UpShot
Siebel Systems, Inc., a provider of business applications software, announced that it has closed its acquisition of UpShot Corporation, which specialized in delivering hosted CRM service over the Internet. Under the terms of the deal, $50 million in cash will initially be paid to the UpShot shareholders, and up to an additional $20 million in cash may be paid in earn-outs during 2003 and 2004.
[2003/11/7 UC Newsdesk]

Network Appliance to acquire Spinnaker Networks
Network Appliance Inc., a provider of enterprise storage solutions, has announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Spinnaker Networks, a privately held company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for approximately $300 million in an all stock transaction. Spinnaker specializes in scalable system architectures, distributed file systems, clustering technologies and virtualization.
[2003/11/6 UC Newsdesk]

Volume 01 Issue 20
Q&A with EDS... AMR: Outsourcing can save up to 43% of IT budget... On-Demand gets personal...
Click here read it online! >>

Volume 01 Issue 19
Disasters: How prepared is your utility computing provider?... Q&A with Computer Associates... Any port in a storm?... You Want Employees Along With That (Virtual) Functionality?...
Click here read it online! >>

Volume 01 Issue 18
Gartner and Forrester: Use of Web services skyrocketing... Virtualising the parts other companies cannot reach... More CRM On-Demand...
Click here read it online! >>

Volume 01 Issue 17
Vertias Q&A: Introducing 'Just in time' for IT resources... Utility Computing: Legal challenges and how to handle them... IBM debuts new grid solutions for banking, financial markets...
Click here read it online! >>

Volume 01 Issue 16
Utility Computing: Finding the Right Project and Picking a Service Provider... A cultural sea change with eyes wide open... Oracle Database 10g -- g for Grid...
Click here read it online! >>