By Greg Papadopoulos

When your business depends on a network of complex computer systems, just the thought of making dramatic changes can cause real pain. Even the promised panacea of utility computing—"as easy as buying electricity or phone service"—makes many CIOs break out in a cold sweat. They worry about the loss of control. Place the company’s data in someone else’s hands? Instant migraine.

This is where the proponents of utility computing—and I’m one of them—generally break out the money-in-your-mattress comparison. Is it safer there, we ask, or in a bank?

The obvious answer is that it’s not only safer in the bank but more accessible as well, thanks to a vast network of automatic teller machines.

It’s a compelling point, I think, but not the most compelling one.

The most compelling point is that utility computing is already a fact, and its widespread adoption will happen more quickly than most people think. Not convinced? Consider the banking example a little more closely. How did you feel about online banking when it was first introduced? OK, now, when was the last time you actually wrote a check?

Just as most of us now pay our bills online, many enterprises already make use of services where they don’t own or operate the infrastructure. Think e-mail, search, electronic storefronts and payment systems, customer relationship management.

Startups, in fact, are putting whole businesses together using Yahoo!, Google, eBay, Amazon or salesforce.com. The trend is also benefiting small to midsize businesses that don’t have the resources to build their own computing grids—and don’t have to.

Now, good CIOs pride themselves on the fact that information technology gives their companies an edge—and I have no doubt that it does—but consider where exactly that edge comes from. Most likely that won’t be in the base layers of the IT stack—the physical plant, virtualization and container (core services) layers. There’s plenty of innovation happening in those areas, especially in terms of energy efficiency, workload optimization and so on—and adopting those innovations brings real bottom-line advantages. No question. But the greatest efficiencies, and economies of scale, come with the utility model.

In other words, your compute-power company will be willing to spend more than you would for even a small gain in efficiency because the payback comes on a much broader scale. It’s simple economics. For example, the company I work for, Sun Microsystems, offers compute power at $1 per CPU/hour and data storage at $1 per GB/month on the Sun Grid—and I bet that’s a lot less than it costs you to do those things in-house.