What is the true meaning of Utility Computing?

Utility computing is one of those computing concepts that have been around for many years, in fact circa the 1960s. The model, which was originally pioneered by the then-dominant mainframe manufacturers, IBM, ICL and others, centred on time-shared computing power and data storage, being accessed by a paying clientele. Historically this was the platform of choice for many of the large international financial institutions.

By the time we reached the mid 80’s mainframe platforms had evolved significantly with facilities such as metered usage and integrated security. The arrival of the PC during this time encouraged the growth of server farms, eventually to become what we now know as the Data Centre. The foundation stone for these significant developments was the birth of virtualisation technology, allowing for available computer processing power to be far greater than that of the individual machine the virtualisation software happened to be running on.

As cluster computing technologies came of age, utility computing developed as a natural partner to the affordable accessibility of processing power. Utility computing is often misquoted and misunderstood as cloud computing, software as a service (SaaS) and even application provisioning. Simply put, utility computing is the bundling and delivery of computing resource as a metered service, similar to that of electricity, gas and water supply. For the end user, simply put, computing resource can now be rented on a pay for what you use basis. The need for capital budget is greatly reduced and in certain circumstances eliminated.

The utility computing option

Since utility computing first appeared over 40 years ago, it has found itself in many quadrants of the technology lifecycle, usually accompanied by large quantities of misconception and confusion over what is truly being offered on demand and what the real benefits offer. Could utility computing have some real benefit to offer your law firm? It had been suggested that one approach was to become an early adopter (a difficult pill to swallow for many a conservative law firm, especially those with indoctrinated IT departments) as at some point in time behind all the hype the real business benefits would surface.

The biggest plus for any firm wishing to embark upon the thorny pathway of utility computing is that it carries a virtual zero capital cost, and can be purchased as required and either scaled up or down. The ultimate answer, scalable networking without the need to physically add or remove core hardware to existing networking platforms. The burden of such processes now transferred to the ISP/Hosting partner who now exist to ensure that capacity is available to meet any sudden surge in traffic, processing or storage demands.

Access to enterprise level data centres has historically been the playground for large multi nationals. The arrival of Amazon EC2 (Elastic Cloud Compute) for example has now levelled the playing field, providing large scale computing and storage power on the public cloud, to firms of any size or geographic location on a scalable, on-demand basis.

There is no longer any reason why small, medium or large legal service enterprises cannot reap the immense benefits that such platforms have to offer. Any law firm seeking to maximise the efficient use of financial and in house IT resources while at the same time minimising capital outlay, cannot possibly afford to overlook utility based computing. All the hardware, processing capacity and storage that they could ever want on a pay-for-use basis is a dream come true for firms of any size wishing to gain that technological and financial edge on their competition.

Which services are viable and truly available to my Practice?

The newly formed buzzword ‘cloud computing’ seems to have confused many when trying to understand the true meaning of utility computing. Utility computing is not Software as a Service, Web processing or other such derivatives, where the emphasis is most definitely ‘cloud’. Nor is it access to locally or co-location based virtualised hardware where the emphasis lies with the term ‘computing’.

Utility computing is the combination of both of these understandings, but to me significantly remains within the confines of the data centre, generally run by the ISP’s such as Star Internet, Rackspace and these days even Amazon.

Utility computing refers to a multitude of services from system infrastructure, such as raw processing capacity and storage services, through to applications such as managed exchange, CRM and associated business processes, for example, payroll services.

By its very nature, utility computing providers supply access to CPU capacity without the need to buy storage or application servers. Consider the recent surge in the want and need for CRM solutions where firms must consider the implementation of server farms and SAN storage platforms. Utility computing in a single stroke takes such considerations away from the board room table.

Software advances over the past 10 years have seen hardware developers taking huge leaps forward in developing their computational power. This has become somewhat chicken-and-egg. Ever more powerful software applications requiring more powerful hardware, ever more powerful hardware allowing for even greater advances in software development.

The need for law firms to keep that competitive edge means continually giving in to the ever tempting need to continually upgrade software applications, requiring ever larger and more complex network platforms and overstretching further, underpowered IT staffing resource.

Usually associated with slow and procrastinated adoption of emerging technology, the Legal profession now has a viable opportunity to gain that financial and competitive edge with utility computing. Equally those providing software applications such as Practice Management Systems, who can also be pedestrian in encouraging the adoption of meaningful technology, should also take stock and look at what utility computing has to offer them. Building hosted platforms to deliver their applications to firms of all sizes under the Software as a Service model jumps out as a sizable competitive edge on the slower competition. Early adoption of their application as a SaaS (Software as a Service) application, hosted on the utility computing platform will ease their position with that increasingly more elusive sale to the small to mid-sized firm. This in turn would ensure the predictable future availability of development capital without forcing incumbent firms into the ever increasing costs associated with “maintenance, upgrade and support’ contracts, currently a must have with any PMS application worth its salt, especially for firms practicing legal aid.

Utility computing will naturally provide PMS and similar legal software suppliers with wider audience appeal to their application, due to the highly cost effective continual commoditisation of information technology.

Email

The most obvious utility computing service that springs to mind is that of web hosting; having said that one of the fastest growth areas according to one of the countries leading ISP’s Star Internet, is that of Managed Exchange email. Both of these platforms depict perfectly the power, flexibility and versatility of utility based computing.

Gartner anticipates that the percentage of commercial mailboxes using a cloud-provisioned model will grow from one per cent of enterprise seats in 2007 to 20 per cent in 2012 as managed services firms like Star and Rackspace step up to the challenge of transferring the economies of consumer mail (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo mail) to enterprises, by delivering hosted Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes under the SaaS model.

Security

Meanwhile, security applications delivered as utility computing services are also expected to have a dramatic impact on the industry, with Gartner forecasting many cloud-based services to more than triple in many security segments. Utility computing will enable security controls and functions to be delivered in new ways and, more importantly, will enable law firms to use security technologies and techniques that are not otherwise cost effective, particularly in the middle sector.

Managed firewall services, MessageLabs antivirus, anti-spam and web content filtering are ideal examples of security services ideally suited to the utility computing model. There are even reciprocal benefits for the solution provider, who can take advantage of utility computing platforms to scale up quickly and easily as demand for their services increase.

Mobility

An ever increasing percentage of the legal industry workforce is becoming more reliant upon mobile technology. Blackberry, iPhone and similar smart-phone devices are being seen in the clutches of lawyers everywhere. Mobile email, time recording and digital dictation whilst on the move, maximising fee earner performance and productivity seems to be gaining more and more momentum each and every day. Delivering such services is ever more complex and ever more burdensome on internal IT staff resource; shifting core focus away from the more practice driven business goals. Outsourced mobility services, unified communications and remote access solutions such as virtual private networks built on the utility computing model will help firms procure and deploy enterprise level mobility services in a much more agile manner.

So what are the true benefits of utility computing for the modern law firm?

Every legal services enterprise should be considering adopting a utility computing solution if it wants to optimise its technology assets while reducing costs; this is never more true if it has unpredictable or rapidly growing computing requirements, in recent times a phenomenon seen by many a law firm.

Spare computing resource, be that storage or processing capacity, once freely available, is now much harder to find. Tighter budgets are forcing IT departments to run their systems close to maximum limits, risking an inability to meet business requirements. The impact of inevitable downtime because of this practice may translate into downtime of business-critical applications like email, security systems or central systems, digital dictation or PMS, with a potential penalty of hundreds of man hours and loss in productivity into the many thousands for the larger firm.

Unusually and perhaps at the opposite end of the scale is that of over capacity. IT procurement is usually based upon current replacement needs with a built in estimate of future expansion of usage and need, leading to vastly over scaled services in the short to medium term, in turn greater initial capital expense. Predicting the upgradeability of hardware components 5 years hence is also subject to a large amount of conjecture. Utility computing platforms on the other hand are both granular and scalable but more importantly can be purchased on a pay-for-use basis. This purchase model can meet the demands of even the most unpredictable of business circumstances.

What of the immediate benefits? Firms of all sizes will generally be able to take advantage of next generation hardware platforms as utility providers constantly seek that competitive edge by investing in ever more powerful, ever more scalable hardware platforms. Bulk purchases from the ISP perspective mean that decreased capital cost, for equipment with shorter lifecycle, ensures a never ending hardware procurement program, the likes of which small and medium sized firms can never compete with.

Although most banks baulk at the prospects of increased practice running costs, carefully costed solutions based upon a predictable monthly payment basis, which in turn ensures ever decreasing amounts in hardware spend, is an argument that can be put forward even to the most difficult of banking organisations; of which there are many in the current market.

Utility computing also brings with it many advantages with deployment. Centrally hosted services by dedicated 3^rd party suppliers, employing dedicated hardware engineers, available 24/7/365, ensures quick, reliable access to all type of hardware platforms.  Generally speaking, once the paperwork is completed, availability for the implementation of operating systems and software applications is almost instant.

The centralised, external nature of hosted services especially over ISP based, MPLS enabled networks, means that remote offices and branches can be added to the existing infrastructure, quickly and easily, ensuring far greater economies of scale, better resource utilisation, guaranteed uptime, reliance and security.

Service and Partner selection

Utility computing by its nature means that you will be making use of shared hardware platforms. If uptime and service is required on hour by hour, minute by minute basis firms should pay close attention to the integrity of service, quality of technical staff, investment in infrastructure and contractual stipulation offered by the supplier. Construct and work through a checklist of action points before signing any contract.

Some of the main points to consider when undertaking any utility computing initiative should be:

• Do you know what technology you need?
• Will this technology definitely address your firms’ business objectives?
• Is the technology solution mature enough?
• Are there any alternative technologies?
• Is your firm mature and committed enough to execute the project?
• How will this project affect IT complexity, and in house IT staff resource? Utility computing should and must be seen to make things better, but could the proposition make things worse?

What of hosting partner consideration:

• How credible is the partner?
• What is the strength of the partner's service offerings?
• How strong is the partner's customer service?
• What Service Level Agreements (SLAs) need to be considered?
• What is the strength of the partner's underlying network infrastructure?
• What steps must be taken to keep the relationship on track in the medium/long term?
• What data security measures are in place?

Bear in mind that certain regulatory restrictions are also applicable. Ensure that all SRA guidelines are met, storage of data in UK/European data centres for example, with no mirroring of data outside of the EU zone.

The core of any outsourcing agreement is the SLA, crucial to the success of any relationship with a utility computing provider. This contract should define various policies, including how quickly the provider responds to requests, and how resource spikes, or sudden requirements for additional computing power, are dealt with.

Conclusion

Utility computing holds great promise for the legal industry, especially for early adopters. Ask yourself how firms you are in competition with have benefited in recent years by outsourcing their Exchange email platform as early adopters. How did they re-focus in-house IT resource to deliver against more strategic business related drivers. What developmental edge did they gain, how far did they drive their case management systems forward without the burden of Exchange server patching, backup and maintenance. Even with that said, what of the other major advantages, no capital outlay, greatly reduced running costs, no server replacement or upgrades, ongoing use of the latest Exchange and Outlook versions without expensive license payments to name but a few.

Utility computing realigns the use of technology with business need rather than investment in technology for technologies sake. Utility computing allows all in-house IT teams to refocus their efforts toward business development, driving the practice forward instead of treading water, maintaining on-premise infrastructure.

"The focus has moved up from the infrastructure implementations and onto the services that allow for access to the capabilities provided," says Gartner. For a utility computing implementation, the ultimate measure of success will be how the services are consumed and whether that leads to new business opportunities.

Finally, many law firms have significant investment in existing infrastructure. To turn that off and move toward a utility computing environment will in general terms not be financially viable. A combination of traditional and utility based models, whereby a firm buys in certain equipment and rents the capacity in place of the rest, might also be a good fit.

As analyst firm Forrester observed in mid-2008, the utility computing model "exactly fits the way small businesses like to buy things, and has the potential to completely upend IT as we know it". In its research the firm found that the utility model provides a very low cost, no-commitment way for enterprises to quickly get new services and capabilities to market that entirely circumvents the IT department, and hinted that various renditions of utility computing, such as cloud computing, are looking like classic disruptive technologies. Internal IT departments whom may fear increased uptake in utility computing should stand back and consider their position. True legal IT professionals whom understand the logistics, needs and requirements of legal IT have nothing to fear.  Their main focus is, but should not be, running mainstream hardware platforms, it should be pioneering legal IT infrastructure to give their firm that competitive edge, by embracing and leveraging the power of utility computing platforms.