As promised, I want to talk about commodity computing this week. What it is, how it affects you, and how it relates to utility computing.

So let’s get straight to it, shall we?

Commodity computing is the idea that computers are just another commodity, to be used as needed. Got new staff? Go buy a cheap computer. 3 new staff? 3 new computers, all inexpensive, all designed to do one thing – let the staff work. No fancy bells and whistles, just a tool to let them do what they need to do. The principle works for staff computers, in-house networks and servers. I’s about buying parts that are as generic as possible, and staying away from custom built, single purpose items.

How does this affect you though? Well, desktops have been going down in price for years, to the point where an inexpensive desktop computer now has as much power as a top-end server from 4 years ago. Even today’s low-end server has great capacity, lots of processor power, and very respectable reliability. So even servers become like desktops – mere tools. Need more network storage? Buy a new server. Websites slow in delivering pages? New server.

And how does this tie in with utility computing, as I discussed last week? Well, suppose that you are seeing an increase in the amount of traffic to your website, and you’re worried about slowness. A quick server purchase can address that directly. And if the website traffic slows down, then you can take that same server and put it to use somewhere else on the network. The fact that it’s a low-price server doesn’t mean it has to be low-usage.

Essentially, it means that you can become your own hosting company pretty easily, able to handle changes in demand. And a well-designed network and infrastructure will let you respond to changes in function and demand very easily. Perhaps not as quickly as a hosting company can do, but for far less money that they would charge you, and with greater control and influence of your own. And having this type of control also lets you look at other aspects of business computing such as software as a service (SaaS) and having a service oriented architecture (SOA). But those are topics for another time.

As always though, check with your technical support provider about what your capacity is, and to ensure that you have a plan to keep your technology in check.