Utility computing

White paper:
The impact and benefits of this new delivery model

This White Paper describes Utility Computing, a new model for the delivery of IT infrastructure services. The essential components of Utility Computing are that:

infrastructure is shared, between application systems or between customers, to achieve flexibility and higher utilisation, and
pricing is variable, in proportion to the services consumed.

Organisations are liberated from the need to have technical knowledge of their specific
IT environment, and track its changes over time.

For organisations, this document describes changes in the way such services are delivered and used, as well as the resulting benefits. Utility Computing makes some fundamental changes as regards ownership, and therefore as to who takes responsibility for levels of utilisation, and how.

A sample roadmap is included, tracking how progress can be made to get to this way of working.

This White Paper is one of a family of such documents, in which Atos Origin seeks to describe both developments within the IT infrastructure environment and how they can be implemented.

The target audiences of this White Paper are senior (IT) managers, consultants and purchasers, rather than more operational or technology-oriented people.