The Innovation in the Data Center Industry comes from those who can connect the dots

Check out this video.

David Brier who created the above video also wrote this article.

“WHAT IS INNOVATION?
LISTEN TO THE WORDS OF STEVE JOBS, RICHARD BRANSON, AND SETH GODIN AND YOU’LL DISCOVER WHAT SEPARATES TRUE INNOVATORS FROM EVERYONE ELSE.
BY DAVID BRIER
It all comes down to dots.

In his famous commencement speech, Steve Jobs said:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
Sir Richard Branson has a mantra that runs through the DNA of his companies. The mantra is A-B-C-D. (Always Be Connecting the Dots).”

Sal Khan presenting to smart MIT students gives insight to background of Khan Academy

Sal Khan the founder of Khan Academy is an MIT graduate and his presentation to smart students and familiarity with audience gives a deeper discussion of Khan Academy.

an example of an insight is the early decision on how to scale.  The video above I started at the 7:37 mark.  This is where Sal explains his first use of Youtube.

6 Innovations that made the Data Center Industry

I have been reading much more than normal which makes it so I haven't been writing as much.  One good book I read is Steven Johnson's Book On How We Got to Now

“How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World [Kindle Edition]
Steven Johnson”

The 6 things are Glass (Fiber Optics), Cold (remove the heat), Sound (Digital/recording), Clean (Infrastructure), Time (data I/O), Light (Fiber Optics again).  For any of you data center nerds you will see how these 6 important inventions all made the data center industry possible.

Great Pictures of Great Libraries

I love to read.  I love to think.  Libraries are critical to those who believe knowledge is important. BBC has a post on beautiful libraries.  Google has published some beautiful pictures of its data centers, but they don't come close to the the images the BBC published.

When will one of the top Data Center programs collapse? Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook

Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook have the largest data center footprints with IT gear than anyone else in the industry.  Their programs are relatively young.  Google started 15 years ago.  Microsoft got going big 10 years ago.  Amazon launched AWS 8 years ago.  And Facebook followed after.

Throughout the history of technology developments a company collapses in the face of competition.  Each of these companies have different business models, but the data center programs are critical for the operation of these companies.  It is so important that billions of dollars are spent and there are thousands of people dedicated to run things.

It is an interesting thought exercise to ask which one of these data center programs could collapse and why.

Part of what inspired this post is this video on Richard Feynman “The World from another point of view.”  Asking questions that give you a different viewpoint can show you things that you hadn’t thought of, and then ask more questions.

Of these four - Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook - how would split up the probability of a collapse of their data center programs and what would the recovery look like?  

Could a design decision be made that causes a cascading failure? Unthinkable.  And because it is unthinkable it might happen as no one thought how to mitigate the event.