HP last week introduced several utility computing services that will cater to companies looking for a way to handle rapidly changing demands for computing resources.

HP's new Infrastructure Provisioning Service (IPS) and Application Provisioning Service (APS) provide extra computing power to businesses that don't want to deploy servers just to handle temporary surges in demand, says Brian Fowler, utility services global director for HP.

Utility computing allows customers to tap into a pool of computing resources hosted by a provider. IBM and Sun also offer or are developing similar services.

Some customers, such as animation giant PDI/Dreamworks, face cyclical demand for computing resources tied to certain events, such as the release of movies. In the past, these companies would have to purchase and maintain sufficient computing resources to handle those peaks in demand, but that capacity would sit idle most of the time, Fowler says.

Dreamworks has been working with HP on utility computing services for about three years, says Mike Kiernan, head of systems infrastructure for PDI/Dreamworks, the Glendale, Calif., animation arm of Dreamworks movie studio. Computer-generated movies such as "Shrek 2" and "Madagascar" were created using early versions of HP's flexible computing services, he says.

PDI/Dreamworks faces strict production deadlines, and HP's services allow Dreamworks' artists to take advantage of additional computing resources to make sure they get the color or movement of characters exactly right, Kiernan says. Without the extra capacity, PDI/Dreamworks would have to reallocate computing resources dedicated to future films to handle the current problem, delaying the production of upcoming films, he says.

HP's services let customers send their data for processing to HP data centers in Paris and Houston, says Norman Lindsey, architect of HP's utility computing services. The data can be compressed and encrypted for transport over the Internet, or larger data sets can be physically mailed to those HP centers, he says.

With the basic IPS, customers can choose the type of HP server that will process their data, Fowler says. Basic processing on 32-bit processors from Intel costs 55 cents per processor, per hour, while servers based on Intel's Itanium processor are available for $1.50 per processor, per hour. Servers based on Advanced Micro Devices' 64-bit chips or Intel's 64-bit x86 processors are priced in between those two endpoints, he says. The IPS and IPS+ offerings are available now, while the APS offering is scheduled to be released in the first half of next year, Fowler says.