Making internal IT profitable

To describe adequately how to make the IT a profit center, we must understand the difference between grids and clouds.

Grids assume a fixed size of resources and the management software (LSF, PBS, GE, and so on) assumes there is more user demand, especially at peaks, - than the resources available. As a result there are a lot of policies based on priorities, urgency, set from the top down. Users expect different levels of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) depending on how many users want to access the grid simultaneously. For low level users, the service levels decay substantially.

A cloud is a grid with elasticity and billing. The elasticity means the service levels can be maintained, as resources are added or withdrawn automatically as needed. The billing means one can can always get what s/he pays for and does not depend on top-down policies. This creates an entire new business model, as described in the 11 slides below.