- What Is Utility Computing?
- Who Is Doing What?
- Examples and Case Studies
- Policy-Based Utility
- Open Standards
- Conclusions
Like this article? We recommend
Like this article? We recommend
Like this article? We recommend
Policy-Based Utility
In the not-too-distant future, corporations will use business-based policy management technology to control costs, allocate finite infrastructure resources, manage application access, and police security. With the advent of utility computing, as well as computer and storage virtualization, corporate concerns about policy ownership issues have risen to new heights. The major concern is that business-based policy must be end-to-end, set by corporate management; then it must be translated into deployment policies within the policy of infrastructure operations; user workflow; network, storage, and server infrastructure; and application software.
The new world of IT, based on utility services, will require a basic rethinking of the ways by which policy is created and managed within the corporation. No longer can policy exist in independent islands, nor can it be in the hands of vendors. This issue is so important that a new position, chief policy officer (CPO), should be created to tackle the tasks of creating corporate business-based policy practices and procedures, and identifying and integrating policy-island infrastructures. This first step will set the foundation for an implementation that's based on the methodologies required to translate, distribute, administer, monitor, and manage policy end-to-end within the corporation, from the user to the application, in a seamless view rather than piecemeal.
For utility computing to succeed, the end-to-end business-based policy management issue must be addressed and planned for. Both service providers and infrastructure vendors must reorient their perspectives and focus on receiving policy direction from the customer, rather than dictating policy to the customer.