| Sumario: | The article discusses the potential for a computing infrastructure using supply systems. Firms will outsource their computing to specialists (IBM, HP, etc) and pay for it as they use it, just as they now pay for their electricity, gas and water. This vision will rely on two unglamorous technologies. The first is "web services"--software that resides in a big shared "server" computer and can be found and used by applications on other servers, even ones far away and belonging to different organisations. The second technology is "grid computing". This involves the sharing of processing power. Both technologies have made great strides recently. Web services, for instance, need common standards and protocols. Some basic standards already exist--awkward acronyms such as XML, SOAP and WSDL provide a rudimentary grammar to let computers talk to each other. But the sticking point, says Phillip Merrick, boss of webMethods, one of the pioneers in the field, has been the many other fiddly but necessary protocols for security, transaction certification, and so on. A breakthrough occurred in October, when the two superpowers, IBM and Microsoft, simply got up on a stage together and declared what protocols they will use. Dubbed "WS splat" by the geeks, this ought to speed up the adoption of web services. Web services are currently most visible in the business model of so-called application service providers. These are firms that offer to host software applications and databases for customers for a monthly fee. At the core of the vision is flexibility--a firm must be able to make its operating costs, and therefore its computing and information costs, totally variable so that they go up and down with business volumes. For computing to be bought and sold as a utility, firms must be able to switch vendors, to do it for all their computing functions, and with meter-based pricing. All of this will take a few more years to get right.
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