As Kumar continues to evangelise his utility computing mantra of “flexibility, flexibility, flexibility,” other executives have announced component parts of the company’s nascent on-demand computing strategy. A relatively new piece of the CA suite, Sonar, plays a key role, enabling a company's technology infrastructure to be linked to specific business processes. The theory is that by charting the underlying technical infrastructure that supports specified business applications, it becomes possible to work out the best way to optimise those resources. In theory, wastage can then be eliminated, staffing overheads reduced and problems be pro-actively fixed.

CA believes that utility computing has the potential to drive a new wave of technology investment – albeit with a new purchasing discipline. Speaking at a JP Morgan conference, Kumar agreed that “a good portion of planned capital spending will be directed at upgrade efforts, replacement systems and gaining benefits from new 'macro technologies' like on-demand computing."

In all of these announcements, CA has joined the growing bandwagon of service providers who have announced allegiance to the utility computing model. Talking here with CA’s Colin Bannister, Utility Computing asks them how their strategy stands out from the crowd.

UC: The Utility Computing marketplace is a crowded one at present, with many service providers announcing their allegiance to a utility computing model. What is CA’s position on utility computing?

Colin Bannister: CA’s view is very much that the Utility Computing model is not about reinventing the IT infrastructure; it’s all about delivering IT to the business as a service. If you look at the way IT infrastructures have developed historically, IT departments have tried to support the service levels of the business. As infrastructure has become more complex and distributed, that has become an increasing challenge. So the Utility Computing model is about improving efficiency and responsiveness of IT. Fundamentally, it’s about supporting the business process rather than supporting the IT infrastructure.

UC: So – it’s more consolidation – businesses consolidating what they already have?

Colin Bannister: Yes, that’s part of it and can be seen as a first step on the journey that takes a company to utility computing.

Different people have different views on how long that journey is going to take, but the first step is to get a baseline so that we know where we are today.

UC: How do you differentiate between Outsourcing and utility computing?

Colin Bannister: I don’t agree that utility computing is “just outsourcing with a different spin.” I do think there is a connection but there are fundamental differences. One of the problems I have with outsourcing is that there is no particular drive for an outsourcer to optimise the infrastructure. This, in turn, reduces innovation. Unless, as internal provider, you become very efficient, there is always the threat of outsourcing. To me, therefore, one of the benefits that utility computing offers to an internal provider of IT services is that it drives efficiency and thus reduces the threat of outsourcing.

I think if any of the big outsourcers do begin to provide a big true utility computing environment then the two things will come closer together. However, at the moment that is not happening.

UC: Is your strategy across the board of all CA products?

Colin Bannister: Absolutely. You could argue that the first component of the infrastructure that became a utility was the network, through the use of the internet. We then progress to storage. In the next phase we’re looking at things like servers and how we provide server capability. That goes all the way through the IT infrastructure stack up to the application itself.

So – if you’re looking at it from a business process perspective – it’s absolutely essential that it covers everything from the application down to the devices which empower that application. Therin lies CA’s claim to uniqueness: we can cover the whole of the environment

UC: Which industries are you seeing most interest in?

Colin Bannister: Always an interesting question. If you look at enterprise management, where a lot of this has grown out of, its always been the verticals that are the most distributed in their infrastructures and so have a sheer volume of machines and locations to manage that are most receptive to these concepts. For CA that means financial institutions, retail and manufacturing.

I think in reality clients are all talking about utility computing – but are trying to understand how to get from where they are today to the new model. There’s a lot of confusion – particularly from a hardware perspective, do they, for example, need to refresh their entire IT range? In my view they certainly don’t – there are steps that allow them to leverage what they’ve got today and progress towards a utility computing model.

There is a lot that can done with existing infrastructures. The key is understanding your asset base and business processes – and how those things align. The rest is about provisioning of services and automating the whole utility computing process