9.2 Revisiting Computing and IT

9.2.1 Where Are We Now, and Where Are We Going?

Computers have followed a long evolutionary path thus far, and most of this has been badly predicted . Powerful mainframe computers were the original model, although even national experts were unable to foresee much demand for these machines. These machines primarily performed numeric computations, such as accounting and specialized computations for military applications. Subsequently, time-sharing machines and then personal computers made possible interactive computing, where each user could interact with one or more computer programs in real time.

This made possible much of what we think of as computing today: text, graphics, gaming, spreadsheets, and the like. As the Internet gained widespread acceptance, various kinds of data sharing and limited communications occurred, as exemplified by e-mail, chat, file transfer, and Web access. Thus, today we have reached the end result of the first philosophical era, namely computers as tools. This has had the consequence of increasing the load on us to be effective tool users. The most productive knowledge workers today are those who have learned to make the tools useful, although this has taken great skill and enormous amounts of time on the part of the tool users. ^[1]

^[1] Even among high- educated , computer-literate, techno-savvy people, it's extremely common to hear stories of serious problems installing a new application on Windows or upgrading one version of system software to another. The technology is too complex, and usage is gated by users' abilities to learn how to master each new and improved tool. This has decreasing returns, for all involved. A different paradigm would be required to combat this trend, if me-centric computing were not already waiting in the wings to take the stage.

We are about to change eras, and with this will come a new period that should prove a renaissance in everyday life, because computers and communication are so ubiquitous and can affect each of us. Soon, each of us will have five to ten or more devices directly working for us. These will interact with hundreds or thousands of other computers over the Internet. Every day, we will have hundreds of tasks we can usefully delegate to our intelligent agents .

This, in turn , will make us feel liberated from many of today's ordinary tasks. Productivity will soar because we will actually be getting time back, rather than squeezing more and more tool-using activity into every waking hour . As machines begin to understand human desires and intent, they will become empowered to do things we care about and do it in combination with other machines. This will stimulate the development of what will ultimately prove to be one of the dominant aspects of the future, machine-to-machine intelligent cooperation. Rather than being a science fiction horror story, in this scenario the machines take over the teamwork that directly achieves the desires of every man, woman , and child.

9.2.2 Reshaping the IT Industry

The IT industry is significantly shaped every decade . Stalwarts and dominant companies come and go. Some catch the next wave; some do not. We see the following disruptive technologies as creating conditions around which the industry will be reshaped: wireless, mobility, intelligent devices, natural language communication and multimodality interfaces, semantics, agents, and the e-service economy.

While you can't predict which companies will prevail in this or which new companies will emerge, you can already see that companies are investing across this range of technologies. Several companies, such as IBM ^[2] , are investing in all of these areas. A decade from now, more money will be made from people getting work done by their machines than was ever made from people doing work on machines.

^[2] http://www.ibm.com/

If the information technology is to serve the average consumer, the technology companies need to become market-driven, task-driven, and driven by the real activities of users. Alas, this is a change so drastic that many companies may not be able to make the transition. The very skills that made them so successful in the early stages of the technology are just the opposite of what is needed in the consumer phases.

9.2.3 IT Becomes a Utility

Tapping into computing resources with a simplicity equal to plugging a lamp into an outlet has been a goal of pervasive computing efforts from the start. Known as utility computing, the idea is to provide unlimited computing power and storage capacity that can be used and reallocated for any application, which is billed on a pay-per-use basis.

Already present in a variety of capacity-based pricing models, utility computing is poised to expand throughout the enterprise as various key technologies grow together, such as Web services, grid computing, and provisioning. Growth of utility computing in the enterprise will deliver to the industry not only equal access to supercomputing resources, but also new revenue streams for commercial data centers, new application pricing models based on metered use, and an open computing infrastructure for companies with little or no standing IT maintenance budget.

Already today, companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun offer services in which additional servers, storage devices, and printers are placed on-site with customers. The customer is charged for the gear only when it is turned on and used. By pooling large numbers of servers connected over the Internet, these computing companies envision a future in which customers don't have to worry about the headaches of administering complicated computers, just as they don't have to know how to run a power plant today.

This means that we are moving towards a grid-like computing environment, where all infrastructure capabilities like storage, databases, or special equipment will all be available in the grid, and anything a customer needs will be available on demand across the grid.

Utility computing on a global scale will require the continued evolution and convergence of core technologies spanning Web services, grid computing, broadband, storage virtualization, automatic provisioning, change management, and security.

Web services will be the driver of utility computing, as there will be lots of machine-to-machine interaction without human intervention. And the utility computing model is perfectly suited for the computing required to support the massive amount of processing that is going to be needed to enable Web services.

Hewlett-Packard ^[3] , for example, has been advancing its UDC (Utility Data Center) initiative for several years , and is currently focused on auto-provisioning technology that will enable utility computing. IBM ^[4] , as another example, began offering a service that lets customers buy Linux computing capacity from Big Blue in much the same way they buy kilowatt hours of electricity from the power company.

^[3] http://www.hp.com/

^[4] http://www.ibm.com/