Infrastructure-as-a-service

March 8, 2005, 9:11pm PST | Length: 00:02:12
From client servers to Web services, from SOA to pay-as-you-go, what's the next wave in IT?

Transcript

Infrastructure-as-a-service

What I've been drawing up here on the board is somethingI've been thinking about for a while, which is "Where is technology headedfor big companies and small companies?" And the way I am thinking aboutthis now is, we will take a look back, but I'm pausing that the next great waveis something I would call "infrastructure-as-a-service."

And by that, I guess, what I mean is this notion of"utility computing." But I don't like using that buzzword because,you know, it means too many different things and I thinkinfrastructure-as-as-service is more accurate because we started withclient-server in 2000. We moved over the last few years with Web services andSOA on the software side and pay-as-you-go and software-as-a-service. We arestarting to see more of this comoditization so that you don't have to reallycare what processor or what kind of storage device you have, but you just wantto reach, you know, want a service level, quality of service of X, Y or Z.That's just beginning and I think as that grows, software-as-a-service reallybecomes infrastructure-as-a-service that's built on this notion that you'regoing to have very little human labor because that's the high cost right now,which is, there is so much complexity that human labor really breaks everythingdown.

We have to get to a point where we can get toinfrastructure-as-a-service because it is machine automation. Machine ishandling all the complexities and its grids and virtualization. There is lotsof intelligence in the network and it's all policy-based so that you can justconfigure the service that you want to deliver you so much capacity or specifickind of software and a certain level of quality of service. That's, I believe,what we had, had in infrastructure-as-a-service. It's not going to happenovernight, but we are definitely on that path. So, get on board.

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