Utility computing services

Research opportunities

The Internet changed our lives by connecting us through e-mail, and the Web opened up vast stores of useful information.

Now networked computers are changing the world again by making it possible to create and consume an extraordinary range of services online.

That’s the vision behind utility computing services.

Banking, shopping, investing, entertainment, scientific research and other online activities require enormous amounts of computer processing -- processing that must be secure, completely reliable and able to respond to rapid changes in demand.

Rather than purchase the IT infrastructure needed to meet those challenges, a more attractive option for businesses and individuals is a utility computing service -- i.e., a secure online service that provides processing capacity. Such a service can respond dynamically to changes, and it can manage peaks in demand that far exceed the capacity of their own in-house systems.

Our approach

Our research into the enabling and delivering utility services focuses on scalability, security and model-driven automation.

Utility service provision will scale in line with the Internet. As a result, we believe that only decentralized control mechanisms will suffice. Such decentralization is a challenging research problem.

We believe that security needs to be built in our systems from the ground up -- not added as a final step.

Model-driven automation means that all management tools and tasks interact with models of the utility computing systems -- changes to those models are then reflected in the systems themselves. At the same time, any changes to the systems are automatically reflected in the models. This means there is always an accurate, up-to-date account of those systems that can be queried and reasoned about.

Research focus

Current work

Our approach is to model a utility service’s complete lifecycle. This model is then implemented on a service utility platform that enables the creation and lifecycle management of secure service cells on (distributed, federated) virtualized resources.

We test our ideas by creating prototype service providers that deliver real services, allowing us to validate and evolve the entire ecosystem required to successfully offer utility services.

• Service utility platform -- continuing work on a platform that allows utility service cells to be built on top of a virtualized utility computing infrastructure.
• Adaptive SAP -- an ongoing, multi-year collaboration with enterprise software giant SAP to marry HP utility services technology with the next generation of SAP software. The aim: to build highly adaptable business process applications that can be delivered as services

Technical contributions

HP Labs utility services technologies have been tested in collaborations with prominent organizations in the financial services, engineering, and oil and gas industries.

This work has enabled HP Services to create its Flexible Computing Services business -- offering utility services delivery on demand, initially to the banking industry.

An ongoing HP Labs collaboration with DreamWorks helps the studio accomplish the demanding and complex image rendering required to make movies like Shrek 2, Over the Hedge and Madagascar.

The recent SE3D animation showcase -- in which 11 separate digital movies were digitally rendered at once via an HP utility service -- also offered a successful utility service ecosystem test.

Related research

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