corporate computing

by Sally Tomasevic, MBA

Disclaimer and Preface. First, Sally Tomasevic, the author of this article, is my wife (I am Marcel Gagné, the owner of this site). Second, Sally wrote this article as part of her MBA work, but with the constant news talk about cloud computing, both hype and reality, including the inevitable quotes from Nicholas Carr, I found that Sally's work was as relevant and important now as when she wrote it, nearly three years ago. With her permission, I publish it here. -- Marcel Gagné

Introduction

Are we now, as Nicholas Carr speculates in his provocatively titled paper, "The End of Corporate Computing", on the eve of an IT revolution? While Carr claims that corporations can share utility hardware and software and champions the cost effectiveness of utility IT computing in the future, he completely fails to consider necessary elements of computing that cannot be provided for within this model.

Carr's argument centres around similarities he believes exist between the history of electrification and the IT industry. In the early 20th century, private generators were housed and maintained at corporations and over time, while utilities and associated infrastructure were built, corporations were supplied electricity by utility providers. As Carr sees it, the IT industry is transforming from a similar asset based model in which IT components reside within the walls of corporations, to a utility based model wherein all IT services can be provided by large, centralized, utility providers. Carr believes that the technological advances in IT, specifically virtualization, grid computing, and web services, are sufficient to pave the way to a utility model. In addition, he views on site corporate computing infrastructure as redundant, postulating that within the utility model, thin clients will replace PCs on corporate desktops.