The good news is, there are no more new terms to learn. Unlike in the initial stage where every early company attempted to create their own terms for similar ideas. IBM chose "on demand", HP picked "adaptive" and "utility", Microsoft prefer "agility," even the word "organic" has been used. Recent announcements seem to be happy to stay with just "utility computing."

Ironically, it is easy to get more confused as to what each vendor means by utility computing. Some are referring solely to data-center sharing, some process provisioning and some offer a pure pay-as-you-go financing option for outsourcing. Despite the terminology battles beginning to subside, we still don't have a unified message from the vendors.

As Leif Eriksen makes clear in the second article of his series, "Why Utility Computing Will Succeed Where ASPs and Outsourcing Failed," utility computing is no flash-in-the-pan development of the ASP model. Equally, it is not just an over-hyped extension of outsourcing. It is a foundation upon which the IT business strategy can be taken to the next level, towards greater agility and efficiency.

Chatting to Stephen Nunn, Associate Partner at Accenture, it seems as if we are heading for a full circle from the mainframes days: Enterprises began with strong centralised resources, then moved to a decentralised environment as PC prices crashed. A prolonged period of compulsive buying by every corporation has left many with an overly complex infrastructure…. which means it has become time to centralise again and regain control. Nunn claims that a period of consolidation and standardisation is essential before companies move up the value chain towards a full utility computing environment.

The key point with this cyclicality is, of course, that new things are learned upon the way - so perhaps there is unity after all: a common desire to regain control and thus improve the bottom line, even if the new "mainframe" in this current cycle is shaping up to be an efficiently pooled network of PCs. Whatever it is, it is better to have more players on board to drive it forward.