Cloud - 'as a service' vs 'utility computing'

In the mid 2000's someone came up with the 'as a service' definitions and we all started talking about services in the cloud and then simply 'the cloud'.

I find that using utility metaphors are a lot easier understood than either 'as a service' or the 'cloud', so:

1. Software as a service: the first time I heard as a service was in 2005 when people were trying to find a different name to what salesforce.com were calling 'no software'. In the same way that you

could turn on a tap to get water from your water utility, you could turn on your internet browser and get a CRM application. You could customize it anywhere downstream of the tap, connect a bathroom,

toilet, dishwasher, or garden hose, or in a fountain. With salesforce.com you could change the name, create custom fields, and attach all sorts of things to your software service, or as it is now named Application as a Service.

2. Infrastructure as a service: we will use another type of utility - Electricity, to describe infrastructure as a service. Electricity is supplied by a lot of different type of things, from wind generated power, to solar, to coal and nuclear and a number of other methods. There is generally a network of electricity wholesalers that concentrate the electricity from these providers and then deliver this electricity to electrical retailer that then sell this onto you and I into our homes. Amazon.com were one of the first wholesalers of infrastructure as a service or the first cloud infrastructure wholesalers. You could easily argue that there were a lot of web site hosting providers around before Amazon, however Amazon were the first

to provider utility like supply of this infrastructure.

Utility-like supply has the following characteristics:

- seemingly endless supply: most of the time, it seems like there is

an endless availability of the service. You cannot use more

electricity than the wholesaler can provide, you cannot use more water

or gas than the utility can provide. This is now termed 'elastic' in

the Cloud market. If you want more the Cloud provider will give you

more on demand, you don't have to procure more infrastructure, it just

turns on more as you need it.

- easy to turn on: generally when you go to rent a new apartment,

turning on he utilities is easy. A phonecall to each utility and it is

set up, and working within minutes or hours. Cloud providers wok like

this as well. You ask for something and you get it generally for a

trial period for free, by entering you email address on their Internet

site.

Commoditisation