What Is On-Demand Computing
On-demand computing is a business computing model that allows companies to provide access to computing resources as they become necessary, rather than full time. Doing this can save the company money on hardware and software licensing among other things. A common application of on-demand computing might be found in a hospital environment or in very large organizations. The computers that are used within an on-demand computing environment are typically reliant on other computers to provide them most of the resources they need. These “thin clients” can run a rudimentary copy of an operating system and use any other needed resources from a networked location. Operating in an on-demand computing enterprise model can allow licensing costs to decrease if the applications are configured in a terminal services environment. The licenses are available as needed but in some cases can be kept in a pool to allow all users to pull from the available copies only when the application is used, reducing
On-demand computing is a mechanism for delivering computing resources and software services in a pay-as-you-use model. Companies like Sun Microsystems and Amazon Web Services (AWS) offer on-demand computing solutions. See Network.com and Amazon Web Services for more details on their respective offerings.
That depends on whom you ask. My good friends at BusinessWeek made it the centerpiece of a breathless portrayal of Sam Palmisano’s new tenure as IBM’s chief executive. “The vision of on-demand computing is downright audacious,” the magazine declared. “It proposes joining all of the thousands of computers and applications in enormous enterprises, and putting them to work seamlessly and in unison–not only in-house, but also with partners and customers.” That could have been lifted from Netscape’s marketing department long before the fall. Maybe I was the dumbest person in the room, but after spending the better part of two hours with a collection of reporters listening to a senior IBM executive explain eBusiness Innovations, I felt in dire need of a mental enema. Maybe I was the dumbest person in the room, but I felt in dire need of a mental enema. Besides cooking up a new way to drum up more business, what was the big deal? This sounded more like another one of those goofy marketing mo
