The Spring 2005 issue of the MIT Sloan Management Review, published today, includes an article of mine titled The End of Corporate Computing. The piece tries to place the utility-computing phenomenon in an economic and historical, as well as technological, context. It looks in particular at how the replication of redundant IT assets in thousands of companies has created a level of waste and overcapacity that seems unsustainable, particularly now that it’s increasingly possible to consolidate those assets.

The situation is strikingly similar to what we saw a hundred years ago with factory power. Back then, manufacturers all had to run their own private generators to power their equipment. But when the network supply of power became feasible, those private generators were dismantled, one by one, as companies shifted to a utility model. The article had two sources of inspiration. Last fall, I began to study in depth the role of Samuel Insull in creating the modern utility industry. At about the same time, I was invited to tour a utility data center in Boston operated by VeriCenter. It became clear to me that business computing is going down the same track that electricity went down at the start of the 20th century. It will take some time, but eventually the phrase “corporate computing” will sound as odd as “corporate electricity generation.”