Commodity Is Not (Necessarily) A Dirty Word

Hydrasight observes increasing use of the term "commodity," within IT organisations, to denote IT infrastructure perceived to be of lower or decreasing value. In contrast, we believe that so-called commodity computing is frequently a platform for the abstraction of underlying IT complexity. In doing so, we believe commodity computing can be a basis for increased alignment to business needs, and a model for addressing IT flexibility/agility. While commodity computing has so far driven the IT organisational agenda based largely on price/performance assumptions for hardware, Hydrasight observes that enterprise IT continues to be driven by the need for ever-greater focus on higher-level, higher-value services. As a result, we predict that "commodity" will increasingly be linked to services as well as products.