Yet as a long-term vision for computing, what the likes of IBM, Microsoft and HP (and Oracle, Sun, etc) are peddling is plausible. The question is, how long will it take? Some day, firms will indeed stop maintaining huge, complex and expensive computer systems that often sit idle and cannot communicate with the computers of suppliers and customers. Instead, they will outsource their computing to specialists (IBM, HP, etc) and pay for it as they use it, just as they now pay for their electricity, gas and water. As with such traditional utilities, the complexity of the supply-systems will be entirely hidden from users.