Monetising idle resources has become a route to success, not only in the business world, but for the average consumer as well. The rising popularity of sharing economy schemes has propelled us into an age of ride sharing, knowledge sharing and house sharing, to name a few.
What happens when those resources go unused?
In England alone, over 200,000 properties currently sit vacant, many of which still cost the owners in taxes, insurance and maintenance. These costs add up, and eventually outweigh the benefits of owning a property, especially if it is unused for months at a time.
The average Airbnb host earns upwards of £700 ($900) or more each month. It is not hard to see why platforms such as Airbnb or VRBO are so popular, when they offer the opportunity to recover some of these costs.
Monetising resources
Just as Airbnb, VRBO and others have made use of, and monetised the resources available, the opportunity stands to do more with what we already have. Consider a car designer, which runs safety simulations every day, many times per day. Every iteration slightly different, in order to determine the safest outcome for consumers. Imagine those simulations split across a grid of computers, as opposed to only on the designer’s computers. Suddenly, a simulation which could take hours to create, takes minutes.
Previously, this kind of networked grid only existed within data centre environments. It was only accessible to big players with deep pockets. Now, emerging technologies allow grids to be built from idle hardware in your home PC, work PC, a data centre or render farm, or the multitude of other sources of idle hardware.
Cudo Compute Platform
One such technology is the Cudo Compute Platform, which connects those with idle hardware, to those who need to consume it. Contributors are paid for the use of their resources, and buyers gain access to the grid, which they can use for a variety of computing jobs. This provides an incentive to participate, but it also gives consumers and smaller businesses access to computing power they would not otherwise have access to.
Not only can idle hardware be monetised, but we can do some good while we’re at it. By reducing the ever-growing need to manufacture more hardware, as well as donating computing power to charitable projects, Cudo Compute encourages the use of what we already have available to us, with tangible incentives to do so.
