A large number of people have been telling me over the past weeks that they cannot see their workloads shifting outside the “protected” four walls of a corporate data center. To that I respond, are your four walls really that protected, I mean most corporate Intranets are little more secure than the social engineering that continually compromises them; take the ChoicePoint incident for example, which had no hacking involved.

The question I really ask: are you so sure that you cannot better manage corporate/state/local/federal policy through contracts? to companies who make isolation, and enforcement a priority because of their multi-tenant nature? Just take for example an apartment building, where the common areas are secured to protect the dwellers despite the fact that some dwellers may not lock their own doors. For tenants who do lock their doors, the exterior doors add an additional layer of protection, under specific contract with the condo association. - Just a thought!

I then moved on to a review of Tom Friedman's new book “The World Is Flat': The Wealth of Yet More Nations” In this review by Zakaria he relates a section of the book that really typified why I think that multi-tenant utilities, like Sun Grid will inevitably have the loads to make them work:

Jerry Rao [an Indian entrepreneur], explained to [Tom] Friedman why his accounting firm in Bangalore was able to prepare tax returns for Americans. (In 2005, an estimated 400,000 American I.R.S. returns were prepared in India.) ''Any activity where we can digitize and decompose the value chain, and move the work around, will get moved around.

specifically that where there is a need which cannot be met with existing resources: financial, staff or other, then innovation will naturally fill the demand. These disruptions/discontinuities where new processes so fundamentally shift the economics vs. the old businesses, it becomes easier for people to recognize that changing, and in some cases standardizing is worth it!

My copy is on order, can't wait.

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