Mike Manos says Adieu to Olivier Sanche

November 29, 2010 Dave Ohara

Mike Manos writes a post saying Adieu to Olivier after talking to Olivier’s brother and wife in France. I couldn’t agree more with what Mike writes in his post. Mike and Olivier are special people in the data center industry and I had the pleasure of making sure Olivier and Mike met in person at Data Center Dynamics SF in July 2009 when Olivier was still at eBay and Mike was with Digital Realty Trust. It would be a bit harder to arrange a meeting with Mike at Nokia and Olivier at Apple, but as Mike says.

Many people know the public Olivier, the Olivier they saw at press conferences, or speaking engagements, and the like. Some of us, got to know Olivier much better. The data center industry is small indeed and those of us who have had the pleasure and terror at working in the worlds largest infrastructures know a special kind of bond. We routinely meet off-hours and have dinner and drinks. Its a small cadre of names you probably know, or have heard about, joined in the fact that we have all dealt with or are dealing with challenges most data center environments will never see. In these less formal affairs, company positions melted away, technological challenges came to the fore, and most importantly the real people behind these companies emerge. In these forums, you could always count on Olivier to be a warm and calming force. He was incredibly intelligent, and although he might disagree, you could count on him to champion the free discussion of ideas.

Mike does a good job of describing why I also enjoyed hanging out with Olivier.

Olivier was the type of person who could light up a room with his mere presence. It was as if he embraced the entire room in one giant hug even if they were strangers. He could sit quietly mulling a topic, pensively going through his calculations and explode into the conversation and rigorously debate everyone. That passion never belied his ability to learn, to adapt, to incorporate new thinking into his persona either. Through the years we knew each other I saw him forge his ideas through debate, always evolving.

The last time I saw Olivier in person was at SVLG’s Data Center Energy Efficiency summit where we sat together critiquing the presentations. A confession, Olivier and I were so busy talking which is why I couldn’t live blog the event. Spending time with Olivier was always enjoyable and took priority.

Olivier’s energy will be sorely missed by those of us who got to spend time with him.

It was in those types of forums where I truly met Olivier. The man who was so dedicated to his family, and the light of his life little Emilie. His honesty and direct to the point style made it easy to understand where you stood, and where he was coming from.

More information about memorial services and the like will be coming out shortly and they are trying to get the word out to all of his friends.

The world has lost a great mind, Apple has lost a visionary, His family has lost their world, and I have lost a good friend.

Adieu, Dear Olivier, You and your family will be in my thoughts and prayers.

Your friend,

Mike Manos

\Mm

Olivier’s passion is well expressed from his Facebook page.

My daddy is going to "Think Different"...

By Olivier Sanche · View Photos

An event 20 years in the making... I am going to fulfill a long time dream and join Apple next month to lead their Data Center team.

I absolutely LOVED my time at eBay. Some of the smartest, most passionate and amazing people work here; I am leaving far too soon... but I cannot believe that I came all the way here and would pass on this opportunity...

This was by far the hardest decision I ever had to make professionally, but as my next CEO once said: "have the courage to follow your heart and
intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become."

Olivier Sanche passes away on Thanksgiving Day

November 28, 2010 Dave Ohara

Update - here is a reference to Mike Manos's post saying Adieu to Olivier

I just received the bad news that Olivier Sanche passed away on Thanksgiving Day. What first comes to mind is Olivier’s great family who I have had the pleasure of meeting many times.

His daughter Emilie is the same age as my daughter (both born in Sept 2001) and was Olivier’s inspiration to green the data center. I met Emilie 2 years ago and posted on her influence on Olivier’s environmental passion.

Leaving the conference, I ran into Olivier Sanche who I had blogged about at the Google data center event. We were chatting and he was short on time as he needed to meet his family. Olivier asked if I wanted to meet his daughter, Emilie Sanche. Why would Olivier want me to meet his daughter? Because I was the one who helped tell the story of how Olivier’s daughter was worried about global warming and the polar bears were going to drown.

A fond memory is also when Charles Kalko and I went over to Olivier’s house with his family for beer and pizza after his last day at eBay to celebrate his new beginning at Apple.

Apple didn’t know how important a data center person they hired until I blogged about his transition.

Apple Recruits eBay Data Center Executive Olivier Sanche, Can Apple Change Data Centers the way they changed cell phone and media players?

I have been lucky to meet eBay’s Sr. Director, Data Center Services & Strategy, Olivier Sanche at a variety of data center events and discuss many different green data center ideas. Last week, Olivier joined me as a panel member at Data Center Dynamics Seattle to discuss Carbon Reporting: Risk or Opportunity. Olivier took a position different than many that carbon reduction is a must, and should not be compromised.

This is a sad day as Olivier was first on my list today to reach out as I fly to SJ tomorrow. To hear before I even start an e-mail that Olivier passed away on Thanksgiving brings an end to one of the best data center friendships I have made.

Olivier loved being at Apple as he could do things he could get done no where else. He had vision, passion, and drive to do the right thing, especially for the environment. One of the sadder parts is Olivier couldn’t talk about what he was doing at Apple, but we had many other data center things we could talk about without touching on any Apple topics.

My trips to SJ are going to be one of my saddest trips for a long time as I know I can no longer visit my dear friend Olivier. But what is even sadder is thinking of Emilie no longer having her awesome Dad.

How about Apple obsoleted the Xserve because the future is in the cloud?

November 9, 2010 Dave Ohara

I've been reading the news regarding Apple's obsoleting the Xserver. There is even speculation the replacement is ARM/A4 servers. Smile

In the server and mobile space, performance-per-watt is very important. This could obviously be linked with the discontinuation of the XServe. Apple sees this as important to marketing:
http://www.apple.com/xserve/performance.html
Measuring in ssj_ops/watt (super-steve-jobs operations per watt). If they can get their PA Semi engineers to design a server chip with enough cores that it can handle similar loads to a Xeon while consuming a fraction of the power and generating far less heat, that's a huge selling point. I doubt they'd be able to cool them passively but say they build a 16-32 1GHz core chip that consumes 250mW per core is < 10 W. Single thread performance would probably suck so they'd have to aim for 2GHz+ but multi-threaded performance would be fine.

News.com has a recent post on the frustration of Mac IT admins.

IT admins mourn Xserve's death

by Erica Ogg

RIP Xserve.

(Credit: Apple)

Not many MacBook or iPhone users are going to weep over the cancellation of an Apple server.

In fact, they probably didn't know Apple even made them. But when Apple announced it was shutting down production of the Xserve effective January 31, a very specific group of people took notice.

The Apple faithful inside corporate IT departments large and small are feeling jilted by Apple's sudden cold feet in the enterprise computing market. And though the announcement came last last week, the full impact of Apple's decision is still being absorbed.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20022249-260.html#ixzz14pw40YQf

How about this for a simple answer? Jan 31, 2011 is the last day the Xserver is sold. January is a typical month for Apple to make announcements. Apple's Maiden DC will be operational.

Don't you think Apple could sell Cloud Computing at a scale that would blow the Mac User base away? Could you imagine having a hundred, a thousand, or maybe even ten thousand Xserve HW running Apple compute jobs for one user?

Take AWS business model and execute it for the Apple market. Include the iPod and iPhone users to send compute jobs to the Apple Cloud.

MacRumors speculates on Apple’s Data Center

October 27, 2010 Dave Ohara

MacRumors speculates on what Apple’s future data center plans are.

Apple's NC Data Center Plot Larger Than Originally Thought

Wednesday October 27, 2010 10:19 AM EST
Written by Eric Slivka

Ongoing investigations over at All Things Digital have revealed that Apple's new data center that is set to open "any day now" in Maiden, North Carolina may be the site of even grander plans than the potential doubling in size discovered late last week. According to that earlier research, Apple's initial proposal to representatives of Catawba County where the project is located included a schematic showing two adjacent data centers that would appear to total on the order of one million square feet, with only one of those buildings having been constructed so far.

Apple's 70-acre parcel across Startown Road from existing data center

New research from All Things Digital indicates, however, that Apple's plans may even extend beyond that planned one million square-foot facility on 183 acres, as the company also owns 70 acres across the street from that site.

The scuttlebutt around Maiden is that the company intends to use it for office space. But that seems unlikely.
A more plausible explanation is that this parcel, too, will be used for data center space.

Ray Ozzie posts on Dawn of a New Day, Continuous Services and Connected Devices

October 25, 2010 Dave Ohara

Ray Ozzie has started a new blog and posts on Dawn of a New Day.

Dawn of a New Day
To:           Executive Staff and direct reports
Date:         October 28, 2010
From:         Ray Ozzie
Subject:      Dawn of a New Day
Five years ago, having only recently arrived at the company, I wrote The Internet Services Disruption in order to kick off a major change management process across the company. In the opening section of that memo, I noted that about every five years our industry experiences what appears to be an inflection point that results in great turbulence and change.

Ray finds information about 25 years on Nov 20 1985.

Imagining A “Post-PC” World

One particular day next month, November 20^th 2010, represents a significant milestone. Those of us in the PC industry who placed an early bet on a then-nascent PC graphical UI will toast that day as being the 25^thanniversary of the launch of Windows 1.0.

25 years ago I was working at Apple. Wow look at where Apple is after 25 years and where Microsoft is. In 1992 I moved from Apple to Microsoft.

From 1985 to 1992 here is Apple vs. Microsoft stock.

But what are the last 5 years like as Ray is infamous for his e-mail waking up Microsoft.

Ray argues for simplicity

Complexity kills. Complexity sucks the life out of users, developers and IT. Complexity makes products difficult to plan, build, test and use. Complexity introduces security challenges. Complexity causes administrator frustration.

And Data Center Services he calls Continuous Services

Continuous services are websites and cloud-based agents that we can rely on for more and more of what we do. On the back end, they possess attributes enabled by our newfound world of cloud computing: They’re always-available and are capable of unbounded scale. They’re constantly assimilating & analyzing data from both our real and online worlds. They’re constantly being refined & improved based on what works, and what doesn’t. By bringing us all together in new ways, they constantly reshape the social fabric underlying our society, organizations and lives. From news & entertainment, to transportation, to commerce, to customer service, we and our businesses and governments are being transformed by this new world of services that we rely on to operate flawlessly, 7×24, behind the scenes.

And future are appliance devices.

But there’s one key difference in tomorrow’s devices: they’re relatively simple and fundamentally appliance-likeby design, from birth. They’re instantly usable, interchangeable, and trivially replaceable without loss. But being appliance-like doesn’t mean that they’re not also quite capable in terms of storage; rather, it just means that storage has shifted to being more cloud-centric than device-centric. A world of content – both personal and published – is streamed, cached or synchronized with a world of cloud-based continuous services.

Ray’s vision is centered around always on data center services with a range of simple appliances to connect to the services.

Who wants to go back to a time when editing win.ini or Mac ResEdit?

Ray paints an interesting future where Google, Microsoft, and Apple will compete for Continuous Services and Connected Devices.