Adventures In Utility Computing

The business of utility computing.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Defining terms, Is Utility Computing SaaS?

Many in the industry use the terms Utility Computing, Software as a Service, Application Service Provider and Grid interchangably. This can lead to a bit of confusion. Let me provide my definition:

  • Utility Computing - The provisioning of compute resources as a utility. Sun Microsystems $1/CPU/hour effort is an example of this.

  • Software as a Service (SaaS) - The provisioning of an application as a service to a customer. SaaS can be a utility but a utility can not be SaaS. ConstantContact is an example of an SaaS company. In this instance, ConstantContact provides both the compute resources and the application.

  • Application Service Provider - This term is out of favor and not used as much anymore. Companies in this space were more Utility Computing providers. Exodus is an example of an ASP. They sold "outsourcing" of your applications to their datacenter. They defined the fee they charged you in Utility Computing terms, i.e. technical.

  • Grid Computing - The ganging of processors together to accomplish compute intensive tasks. Sometime this also refers to ganging more than just the processors together and includes storage.
Distinction between these terms is critical to sorting the players and watching the industry mature.

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