60ghz millimeter wave technology is coming are you ready to take advantage of the changes?

I’ve been keeping an eye on the 60ghz millimeter wave techology. Why? Because being able to go 200-300 meters at 10gbps and possibly up to 1km under the right conditions allows faster deployment and lower cost of high speed connections that in the past would require fiber. 40gbps systems are being worked on next.

TechCrunch covers 60ghz being added as a Telecom Infrastructure project. https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/12/facebook-backed-telecom-infra-project-adds-a-new-focus-on-millimeter-wave-tech-for-5g/ 

Facebook announced their 60ghz efforts last year. https://code.facebook.com/posts/1072680049445290/introducing-facebook-s-new-terrestrial-connectivity-systems-terragraph-and-project-aries/ 

Verne Global Iterates Improvements in Spaces, Mechanical and Electrical

Verne Global has a new customer announcement in its Iceland data center.

“Leverages Verne Global’s access to Iceland’s abundant, renewable power for its 5.1 petaFLOPS supercomputer

**London, UK and Keflavik, Iceland, 20 September 2017 - **Verne Global, a provider of highly optimised, secure, and 100% renewably powered data center solutions, today announced that DeepL has deployed its 5.1 petaFLOPS supercomputer in its campus. Designed to support DeepL’s artificial intelligence (AI) driven, neural network translation service, this supercomputer is viewed by many as the world’s most accurate and natural-sounding machine translation service. Verne Global was selected because of the following factors:”

— https://verneglobal.com/news/deepl-anchors-neural-machine-translator-at-verne-global

It's been quite a while since I was at Verne Global's data center in Iceland and I had the opportunity to chat with Tate Cantrell and see what has gone on in the data center since I was there. The data center is 100% renewable energy that has not changed. One of the more interesting iterations for the data center is how mechanical and electrical systems in the data center have been designed around local expertise for the aluminum smelting industry. Iceland is ranked #11 in the world in aluminum smelting and one of the main attractions is the low cost of power. With all that power comes electrical and mechanical systems to support the plant and Verne Global has been able to leverage those systems to improve the quality while reducing the cost of the mechanical and electrical systems which is the majority of the costs in data center construction.

I am waiting for some pictures of the earlier systems in comparison to the current.

The other iteration is there are now three different data halls. powerDIRECT, powerDIRECT+, powerADVANCE. https://verneglobal.com/solutions

powerADVANCE is a Tier III data center space with 4 electrical circuits.

powerDIRECT+ looks like enterprise IT space with rack aisles with no generators or batteries, connected to a high reliability grid which is one circuit.

powerDIRECT is more open like a manufacturing or warehouse space with open areas to put in your own rack infrastructe

Having three different spaces for user to lease makes so much sense. In fact I wrote about the idea in 2010. http://www.greenm3.com/gdcblog/2010/7/22/message-to-the-cfo-green-the-data-center-by-asking-for-a-mul.html?rq=high%20rent

It turns out that DeepL is 100% in the powerAdvance space. What would seem like an interesting exercise is to put the ML controller in the powerAdvance space and send the ML jobs to their power intensive GPUs in the powerDirect space.

iOS 11 the Mobile OS that can replace Desktop for more people

I have worked on OS, operating systems for a long time, working on System 6 & 7 at Apple, then Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT3.1. NT3.5, NT4, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. Watching mobile OS efforts from Apple, Microsoft, Google, Palm and others has too many times been by a small team. I bet you the iOS team is bigger than the MacOS team, and it is more exciting and challenging to develop iOS features than MacOS. With all the new hardware showing up in iPhones and iPads there are more changes than any Desktop hardware. Who would build a better camera into a Laptop?

There are plenty of reviews out there on iOS 11 and many are saying how good it is and how it is a desktop replacement. http://www.trustedreviews.com/reviews/ios-11

iOS has better multitasking, 64-bit only, File Manager, Multi-screen, drag and drop, and many other features you would expect from a modern operating system. 

I can now do something I always did on my Mac and screen grab and insert the image. Below is some research I am doing on the gray zone and found some good papers written by strategic analysts.

After 15 years finally figured out Infrastructure Patterns

About 15 years ago while I was still at Micosoft I switched over to a group that worked on the IT Pro challenges, the world of a system administrators running the IT infrastructure. Watching how a group would provide guidance it seemed like software patterns could be applied to IT infrastructure. One of the people I connected in that conversation was Bill Loeffler. Unfortunately, Bill passed away 3 years ago from melanoma and wrote a post about our past.

I wish I could have this conversation with Bill as after 15 years I have finally figured out how to apply patterns to IT infrastructure. The path to get there though led me through data centers as they are critical parts of cloud infrastructure. Then to design and construction of data centers.

And last week I found a paper that does a good job of describing software patterns in a way that can be used for IT Infrastructure.

“Te pattern concept lets us think about the world in a new way.Pattern languages can be used to research and communicate design expertise to make it more widely effective. Te idea of a simple, creative process opens the field of creativity for everyone. And the ethics of design – with the quality of living systems at its core – supports better design.
Alexander’s thinking seems even powerful enough to question the status quo of the existing world and to show a way to correct its deficiencies. Tisclearly points to a world after capitalism. A better world needs a new top priority, and must put profit into a subordinate position. The new top priority is the quality of living systems, the quality without a name
in English, Lebendigkeit in German. All people can understand this quality and use their in born feeling for this quality. Alexander suggests making design knowledge available to all people, so that all people can better act as designers of their personal spheres and as co-designers of our shared world.
May this rethinking of the world succeed”

— https://www.academia.edu/23521230/Christopher_Alexander_-_An_Introduction_Draft_for_Feedback_and_Discussion_?auto=download

Patterns are a powerful concept. IT infrastructure has patterns that can be combined with software patterns to create new systems.

Media needs to learn how to calculate tax breaks for data centers

I saw this article on Salon about technology companies getting subsidies for building things like data centers in a city. Apple's data center in Ohio is the example in this article.

“For agreeing to build a data center in Waukee, Apple received $213 million in tax breaks for 50 permanent jobs — that’s $4.3 million per worker — and even bigger subsidies are on offer for factories. Tesla received $1.25 billion in assistance to build its gigafactory in Nevada, and Foxconn is poised to get a $3 billion incentive for its proposed Wisconsin factory, despite a legislative analysis showing the state won’t break even for at least 25 years.”

Having worked with tax teams who negotiate details like property tax let's review what the media doesn't cover. What is property tax?

“The property tax is the main tax supporting local education, police/fire protection, local governments, some free medical services and most of other local infrastructure.”

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax#United_States

Let's do a simple number 1% property tax on a small data center. :) $250 million. So the annual tax bill is $2.5 mil. One of the main use of the property tax is for education. With 50 employees that is $50,000 per employee. What is out of whack is the assumption that the cost of the property equates to a tax burden. This leads to a discussion of what is reasonable amount of property tax to support 50 employees.

Let's jump to sales tax. It is easy for a $250 million data center spend $250 million on IT equipment that it replaces every 3 years. Let's use a low sales tax rate of 5% for $12.5 million sales tax. Almost every capital equipment intensive industry gets exemptions on sales tax to equip a facility. Yet, IT equipment all too often is not considered capital equipment to be exempt from sales tax and special legislation is required.

If there was no data center in an area there would be no property and sales tax on a data center. With a data center with 50 people and $250million of IT equipment in $250 million building what are fair taxes?  A $213 million tax break enrages people, but without these breaks there is no way a data center would be built. What few cover is the incremental taxes that do come in from a data center. Property taxes will be paid and sales taxes on other items.

This is why the government's are willing to change tax structures for data centers in their location. To be fair based on the impact the data center with its few employees.