Providing IT as a utility service
After getting their coffee from the vending machine, Berta and Alex return to their desk.
Alex: We should talk a bit more with our colleague, Harold. From what I’ve understood from our meeting, Harold is part of the project, even if he seems a bit reluctant to do it. Seems like he’s free now – why don’t we talk with him a bit?
Berta: I had to deal with this kind of person in my previous job. I really don’t like how they behave with new hires, considering them more as a threat than an asset to the company. He probably thinks that he is going to lose his job because of us; that’s the reason he hasn’t talked with us at all.
Alex: Oh, come on! Let’s talk with him a bit, and I’ll show you that you’re wrong!
Harold is focused on a long, complex report when the two young colleagues approach him. Alex addresses him first.
Alex: Hey, Harold, how is it going? Are you working on something interesting?
Harold doesn’t say a word. Alex, trying again, points at Harold’s desktop, a black-and-white picture of an old, huge machine.
Alex: Oh, you have a cool wallpaper! What is it supposed to be?
Harold: I’m not surprised you don’t recognize it; you are too young. In the old days, this kind of machine was used in factories to generate electricity.
Figure 1.6 – Machines generating electricity (Source: Photo by 
, at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Generator_of_Yaotsu_Old_Power_Plant.jpg, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.)
Alex: No way! Why would someone have a machine like this when electricity is available at the push of a button? This looks so big – it obviously required a lot of space, lots of maintenance, and tons of money to own.
Harold: That’s why not every factory could afford it. Let me take you a little back in history. In the early days—I guess about a hundred years ago—there was no central way of producing electricity. Every factory used to set up these types of giant machines to produce their own electricity. Obviously, this was a challenge for small businesses, because of the initial cost and ongoing maintenance.
Alex: Wow. I didn’t know that.
Harold: Sometimes, a big industrial unit needed two or three of these machines to address the growing demands of electricity, and obviously, a dedicated team would maintain and run it. The whole production process would stop if this machine failed, so it was a very critical piece of machinery – but now, electricity production and distribution have become so much simpler and that’s why this machine is in a museum. When energy companies started producing electricity centrally and began distributing it, the whole scenario changed. Some energy companies used hydropower or coal power, and nowadays, it can be nuclear or solar power. Companies that operated these power stations started setting up a grid of cables all over the place so that they could distribute electricity to consumers. Consumers could be big industries or small households who would just pay for what they use and never pay for the infrastructure cost of setting up the whole power station.
Alex: Wow! I did not know that electricity production has come such a long way. I never think about all this when I consume energy at home or in the office. We just press a button to light a bulb and only pay for what we use.
In the meantime, Berta, who was listening to the whole story, considered the challenges that factories had to face in the old days. Suddenly, she realized that Harold’s story was related to their project and to cloud computing in general.
Berta: Hey, Harold, sorry to interrupt you. You are basically talking about the same relationship between how companies manage their on-premises IT infrastructure and how they manage their cloud-based IT infrastructure.
Harold: What?
Berta: Well, as you know for sure, in the early days of computing when companies started to use computers, they started by maintaining a data center—a place to keep, or host, all their applications, servers, networks, and storage. Compare a data center to this giant machine.
Harold: You don’t have to explain what a data center is to me, young lady!
Berta: I’m sure, Harold, but just let me finish. Data centers require a huge amount of capital expenses, and companies such as ours have to keep them running smoothly so that business can run smoothly, and because of that, they hire a team of professionals such as you to maintain and operate them. With business growth, companies may need to add more capacity to their data centers or add more data centers to increase the availability of their applications. This puts an extra burden on companies financially, and they have to focus their time and energy on keeping these data centers running.
Harold: Yes, sometimes we call this activity keeping the lights on.
Berta: Oh, cool – I didn’t know that! This is where the interesting part of the story comes in: with cloud computing, companies don’t have to worry about all of this. They can choose a cloud provider in the same way we choose an electricity provider for our office or house, and they can start by using the resources hosted in the cloud provider’s data centers. These data centers may host ready-to-use applications or the building blocks to build your own custom application. Cloud providers maintain and run data centers all over the world to provide services to their customers, who will pay only for what resources they use – or to use cloud computing terminology, they pay as they go, in the same way that we pay only for the electricity we consume.
Harold: Hmm…
Berta: Cloud providers keep thousands of servers running at scale, so multiple customers can start using it without worrying about setting up their own data centers. This allows their customers to focus on their core activities, usually the development of their applications, and save them from undifferentiated heavy lifting, such as server provisioning, storage expansion, backups, security... Cloud providers provide their resources through the internet; in a similar way, electricity producers distribute their energy through a network of electric wires, grid stations, and other similar components. In both cases, we are still talking about networks:
Figure 1.7 – Comparison between electricity and cloud computing
In summary, if we need some electricity, we just have to sign a contract with an electricity provider and then press a button. In the same way, if companies need IT resources, they sign a contract with a cloud provider and just… press a button! Or maybe I should say… call an API! Hahaha!
Alex: Berta, you are amazing! What an excellent way to explain cloud computing to everyone. Let’s use this explanation in next week’s presentation that we have to deliver. Thank you.
Harold: Ah! I’m not sure about all that… Please leave and let me work now! I have stuff to do!
Alex and Berta, convinced about what they’ve said, leave Harold and come back to their desk happier than before. They have just completed one step in their cloud journey and still have a long way to go!