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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Systems/Enterprise:
$9B ENGINEERING COMPANY SAVES BIG WITH UTILITY COMPUTING
Fluor Corp, an $9 billion engineering and construction company based in Aliso,
Viejo, Calif., has cut IT costs by $85 million over the last three years as a
result of its use of utility computing.
The savings are so big because, in true utility computing fashion, Fluor pays
for what it uses. Before the company switched to a utility computing
infrastructure, 95 percent of its costs were fixed; that number is down to
around 25 percent now.
However, Fluor is not alone in its adoption of utility computing. Fifteen
percent of companies currently utilize some form of utility computing, and
that number will be up to 30 percent in three years, according to Gartner
Group data. In fact, Gartner says, the market itself will triple during that
same time frame, increasing from $8.6 billion to $25 billion.
Utility computing has saved Fluor more than just money, though. IBM and Cisco,
from whom Fluor buys its usage, set up a data center for the company in Chile
in about 70 hours. It would have taken Fluor three months to do the same job.
Sixty percent of Fluor's IT department currently runs on the utility model,
and that process should be complete by the end of 2005. However, the company
is already looking at a move to Grid computing, which offers greater
efficiency and even more savings.
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