IBM Offers Processing Power as a Utility

[Strawbs]

the question is... will they sell your company details to Pill gate$ and his crew?

I for one could never trust an online storage company not to divulge any information that it deemed profitable.

How trustworty are the companies employees? they might quit tomorrow, taking your company secrets to the competition for the reward of a higher salary, and they could keep tapping into the storage vault thru a corrupt former colleague.

This is doomed before it gets off the ground because the only goals of the corporate world are Mon£tary.

Any company that signs up for this deal is dumb enough to deserve liquidation.

[Jimstep]

I don't think this utility is any different than companies that outsource their non-core functions to other companies to get the best price for the services rendered.

I've worked for IT outsourcing companies where we processed information for hundreds of clients all running within the same compute utility. They paid us to manage the harware and supporting software. Their data was housed in our buildings and secured by our buildings.

What you have to understand is that there are a lot of small companies that need this service because they cannot afford the entry fee for that type of technology. With IBM setting up a compute utility that can leverage costs across multiple customers, now you have an efficient way to offer the technology to the smaller companies at an affordable price.

You are basically entering a partnership. You have to make sure you understand the legal terms of the contract. The marketing aspect of the relationship is that as newer technology becomes available, the customers of the compute utility don't have to worry about how to physically incorporate it into their business, the compute utility will handle those details leaving their clients to concentrate on their core business.

As with any business relationship, you still have to be careful. IBM has an excellent record. There's not going to be any one person that has access to sensitive customer data. There are security products that provide protection and is part of the deal. So the technical folks may be providing the performance and capacity you need, but they don't have a clue as to what the data represents. The client still owns the data.