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When the Internet and the World Wide Web caught on, well beyond a public curiosity and firmly entrenched as a wave of the future, there was all sorts of speculation about how all of our data would be stored out on the Web. Our documents and information would exist only in cyberspace and the ASP and thin client would rule.
Though it is a possibility for the future, the reality is that companies and individuals are keeping their data close to their chest.
"There is a desire for computing as a utility," said Irving Wladawsky- Berger at a recent Global Grid Forum in Toronto. "It is a wonderful concept but utilities need commonality to work...the reason that utilities and ASPs have gone close to nowhere is that they don't have a common protocol."
Wladawsky-Berger, often referred to as IBM's CTO, equated the situation to countries and cities using completely different electrical systems. Though we need an adapter to plug in a Canadian...