Utility Computing

Utility Computing > Business issues

The pressure is on all aspects of the business to reduce cost. No organisation is exempt and IT is seen as an area where significant cost savings should be possible. For some, there is an interest in moving expenditure from capital to operational, but overall, cost reduction is a primary focus.

Another pressure is to deliver services and applications ever more quickly. The drive for competitive advantage, especially for web services where days or hours can mean a loss of market share, is a strong commercial influence. Often, a simple lack of forward planning means that IT has to deliver supporting infrastructure in a very short timeframe.

Many organisations have inherent inefficiencies through the “stovepipe” nature of their application deployment. Decentralising systems meant applications were deployed on a “per server” basis; easy for testing application coexistence but not for reducing the operational costs of hardware, data centre space, power and cooling for a growing infrastructure. Consolidation and virtualisation have made their marks but few organisations have obtained the full potential of savings from these initiatives.

Utility Computing > The Anix Service

As a managed services provider for many years, Anix is well placed to assist clients with the creation and day-to-day operation of a utility infrastructure whether hosted or located in a client data centre.

Pay as you grow
This is a common interpretation of utility computing where Anix will implement an agreed infrastructure stack and you know capacity will always be available when you require it. This can decrease as well as increase but you only pay for what you use, as you need it.

Phased deployment
This approach means you have a planned growth strategy and Anix deploys sufficient infrastructure to meet your needs but charges using a pre-agreed model such that you know in advance exactly what costs you will receive.

Transaction charging
This is of help to clients who want to relate their costs to a given business transaction. So long as it can be measured, Anix is able to construct a transaction charge. This could be the volume of calls received by a call centre or the number of shopping transaction that a retail site receives.

Utility Computing > Key benefits

• Free up capital expenditure
• Enable the rapid deployment of applications and services through the immediate availability of the underlying infrastructure
• Pay for what you use as you need it
• Understand your costs and relate the cost of IT to the success of your business