The end of corporate computing

MIT Sloan Management Review

Volumn 46, Issue 3, 2005, Pages

  Carr, Nicholas G ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 18444382358     PISSN: 7653697     EISSN: 1782155X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. There are notable exceptions. See, for example, M.A. Rappa, "The Utility Business Model and the Future of Computing Services," IBM Systems Journal 43, no. 1 (2004): 32-42; and
2. L. Siegele, "At Your Service," Economist, May 8, 2003 (a survey of the IT industry).
3. The term was introduced in a 1992 paper by T.F. Bresnahan and M. Trajtenberg, later published as "General Purpose Technologies: 'Engines of Growth'?" Journal of Econometrics 65, no. 1 (1995): 83-108.
4. See also E. Helpman, ed., "General Purpose Technologies and Economic Growth" (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998).
5. A. Friedlander, "Power and Light: Electricity in the U.S. Energy Infrastructure, 1870-1940" (Reston, Virginia: Corporation for National Research Initiatives, 1996), 51.
6. D.E. Nye, "Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology" (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1990), 236.
7. T.P. Hughes, "Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930" (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), 106-139;
8. and R.B. DuBoff, "Electric Power in American Manufacturing, 1889-1958" (New York: Arno Press, 1979), 42-45.
9. For more on Insull's career and accomplishments, see Hughes, "Networks," 201-226; and
10. H. Evans, 'They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators" (New York: Little, Brown, 2004), 318-333.
11. "The Systems and Operating Practice of the Commonwealth Edison Company of Chicago," Electrical World and Engineer 51 (1908): 1023
12. as quoted in Hughes, "Networks," 223.
13. DuBoff, "Electric Power," 40.
14. For a discussion of the homogenization of information technology in business, see N.G. Carr, "Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage" (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2004).
15. A. Andrzejak, M. Arlitt and J. Rolia, "Bounding the Resource Savings of Utility Computing Models," working paper HPL-2002-339, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, California, Nov. 27, 2002.
16. V. Berstis, "Fundamentals of Grid Computing," IBM Redbooks Paper, Austin, Texas, Nov. 11, 2002; www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/pdfs/redp3613.pdf.
17. C. Hildebrand, "Why Squirrels Manage Storage Better Than You Do," Darwin, April 2002, www.darwinmag.com/read/040102/squirrels.html.
18. B. Gomolski, "Gartner 2003 IT Spending and Staffing Survey Results" (Gartner Research, Stamford, Connecticut, Oct. 2, 2003).
19. Effective and standardized metering systems will be as crucial to the formation of large-scale IT utilities as they were to electric utilities, and work in this area is progressing rapidly. See, for example, V. Albaugh and H. Madduri, "The Utility Metering Service of the Universal Management Infrastructure," IBM Systems Journal 43, no. 1 (2004): 179-189.
20. Although the shift to utility supply will reduce the need for in-house IT staff, companies will likely maintain groups of professionals with both technical and business skills to ensure that the purchased IT services are properly configured to support in-house processes and vice versa.
21. Google and Amazon.com already provide utility IT services. Companies draw on Google's data centers and software to distribute advertisements over the Internet and add search functions to their corporate Web sites. Amazon, in addition to running its own online store, rents its sophisticated retailing platform to other merchants such as Target, JCPenney and Borders.
22. C.M. Christensen, "The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail" (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997).
23. It's telling that today's vendors of utility IT services such as hosted applications and remote data centers have been among the most aggressive adopters of open-source software and other commodity components.
24. Nye, "Electrifying America," 170-174.