Both HP and IBM have recently announced enhancements to their Utility Computing offerings for the "Adaptive Enterprise." In short, the approach is supposed to allow companies to use their resources, both hard and soft, in a more cost-effective manner. Using systems, "on-demand" on an as needed basis.
From a security perspective these solutions could have positive impact. Currently, to create redundancy for business continuity and test beds, organizations often need to have separate hardware and software for each backup system, testing server farm, and staging area.
With Utility Computing, the same servers being used on Monday for testing or staging could be called up on Tuesday to provide backup processing power or on Wednesday to serve as roll-over machines should a farm of production servers go down.
It all sounds a bit 'future world' for administrators who have had to rollover systems in times of crisis and feel more comfortable with completely HA-ready system duplicates. But it's not as out there as it may appear. Re-using hardware is something that can reduce costs if done wisely.
Is Utility Computing ready for prime-time security? In my opinion, not quite yet. But it's promising and a goal to work towards as companies continue to look for efficiencies across the enterprise.
Posted by Diana at August 19, 2003 06:44 AM