IBM Wants CPU Time To Be A Metered Utility

kwertii writes "IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano announced a sweeping new business strategy yesterday, pledging $10,000,000,000 towards redefining computing as a metered utility. Corporate customers would have on-demand access to supercomputer-level resources, and would pay only for time actually used. The $10 billion is slated for acquisitions and research to put the supporting infrastructure in place. Will this model revolutionize the way companies compute, or is this plan doomed to be another PCjr?"

Comments

In other news

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Ballpoint pens proclaimed "the wave of the future".

It will be tough.

[ellisDtrails]

It will be tought getting quarters and dimes in the floppy slot. Or is that a cupholder?

Re:It will be tough.

[JonnyElvis42]

It will be tought getting quarters and dimes in the floppy slot. Or is that a cupholder?

Getting them in? What about getting them out?! All those poor sysadmins...

Does he have a doctorate in Evil?

[Jaguar777]

Samuel J. Palmisano announced a sweeping new business strategy yesterday, pledging $10,000,000,000

I think Samuel has been watching Austin Powers way too much.

Re:Microsoft's Plan for Palladium?

[Soko]

More like "charge you to get back your bits. The ones in your computer and your pants."

Soko

Seems kinda silly....

[ChuckMaster]

...in an age were processors are dirt cheap anymore. I mean really, if I saw a p2 400 chip and a quarter lying side-by-side on a street corner, I'd pick up the quarter.

Mind those infinite loops!

[voudras]

wow, bad programming would _REALLY_ cost you!

there goes the wintendo TCO

Re:You're all missing the point

[Baron Ricks]

Instead of some small company having to keep an expensive IT staff and maintain their own computers/network/storage, IBM says that it will do this for you.

Great! That means Im getting fired...

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Apply for a job at Big Blue now and save your future

In 100 years...

[mikeage]

Well, sure, the Frinkiac-7 looks impressive [to student] Don't touch it! [back to class] But I predict that within 100 years computers will be twice as powerful, 10,000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings in Europe will own them.
--Prof. Frink

Interesting idea....

[dacarr]

This might work well on the corporate level, but clearly not at the home user level. The big thing with home users is that the computer becomes a very personal thing in many cases - while your typical home luser will run a Gateway or a Dell (DUDE!), many geeks here on slashdot have probably built their own box from the parts level (or in a few cases, for all I know, that even involved a soldering iron). But hte point here is that it is their computer - unless they're running (say) SETI or hosting their own web page off of their DSL, they probably don't want other people sharing their user space. It's sort of a possessiveness thing - they don't want to run somebody else's hardware. Besides, you go to some LAN party, what's more impressive, that big ol' honkin' tower, or something looking like a dumb terminal?

(*nix bigots and such note: Yes, I know, your defined user space on foobox is restricted unless you've chmod'ed your ~ to 777 (which is of course bombastically stupid), but do keep in mind that a typical home luser is running Windows, and accordingly sees their computer as their ersatz "user space".)