From the Computer Utility to Cloud Computing - To the Cloud: Big Data in a Turbulent World - page 44

Is the Cloud a Utility?
This may change before long because there is a contradiction at the center
of cloud computing that will likely heat up the debate. Put simply, some
forecasts for computing are coming to fruition and the cloud is taking
on more of the characteristics of a genuine utility (Clark 2012a). It is not
just the academic and policy communities that are beginning to think
of today's IT environment in public-utility language. When asked what
his two companies, Twitter and the e-payment irm Square, have in com-
mon, Jack Dorsey answers, “They're both utilities.” Moreover, Facebook
head Mark Zuckerberg has spent years referring to his company not as a
social network, but as a social utility. However, when asked if his utility
should be regulated, the Facebook founder backed off: “Something that's
cool can fade. But something that's useful won't. That's what I meant by
utility .” Of course, most of the cool things we think of that will last are
not referred to as utilities. But whatever the deinition or the reaction,
the concept of the utility is increasingly part of the ongoing debate about
the developing structure of the computer universe (Fox 2013). Cloud
computing has made it a more frequently used concept.
Taking into consideration the experience of earlier utilities, such as
water, gas, and electricity, one energy expert deines the requirements of
a utility market as comprising the following:
•Asourceofenergygeneration
•Atransportationnetwork
•Atransmissionanddistributioncapability
•Ameteringcapability
•Apricingmechanism
•Aregulatortoensureadherencetorules
•Acustomer(JamesConstant,citedinClark2012a)
This coniguration of characteristics can be debated, but most would
agree that they are among the major ones deining a utility. According
to Clark, cloud computing meets most of these criteria. It is a source of
energy generation in its ability to compute and store data. The Internet
and the telecommunications systems connected to it form the transpor-
tation network. Data centers handle the transmission and distribution