Mike Manos’s presentation at 2009 Gartner Data Center Conference

Gartner’s Data Center Conference is coming up and I am building my agenda.  Mike Manos’s presentation will be an interesting one to watch.

Regulation. It's Real. It's Coming. It's Expensive.

Wednesday, 02 December 2009
01:45 PM-02:45 PM

Speaker: Mike Manos
Location: Octavius 2
Session Type: Solution Provider Session

Energy regulation is coming. The US House of Representatives has already passed its Cap and Trade legislation and the Senate has a bill in committee. In Europe it already exists. The operational and cost impact on datacenters in the today's regulatory environment is substantial. In this presentation Mr. Manos will provide a detailed overview of the pending industry-impacting legislation and what you will need to do to negate its impact.

I’ve seen Mike present many times and it is always entertaining.  But, what I am most interested in is the crowd that attends Mike’s session and whether they get it.

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Gartner’s Top Strategic Technologies for 2010 – IT for Green and Reshaping the Data Center make the list

ZDnet has an article on Gartner’s top 2010 strategic tech list.

Gartner: Cloud computing, analytics top 2010 strategic tech list

Posted by Larry Dignan @ 5:46 am

Gartner unveiled its top 10 strategic technology list for 2010. Unified communications, servers and specialized systems are out. Client computing, data center do-overs, flash memory and mobile applications are in.

The list, presented Tuesday at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando, by analysts David Cearley and Carl Claunch looks like this:

For the data center crowd,  look at #5 “Reshaping the Data Center”  From Gartner’s press release.

Reshaping the Data Center. In the past, design principles for data centers were simple: Figure out what you have, estimate growth for 15 to 20 years, then build to suit. Newly-built data centers often opened with huge areas of white floor space, fully powered and backed by a uninterruptible power supply (UPS), water-and air-cooled and mostly empty. However, costs are actually lower if enterprises adopt a pod-based approach to data center construction and expansion. If 9,000 square feet is expected to be needed during the life of a data center, then design the site to support it, but only build what’s needed for five to seven years. Cutting operating expenses, which are a nontrivial part of the overall IT spend for most clients, frees up money to apply to other projects or investments either in IT or in the business itself.

Green IT has morphed into IT for Green which aligns well with Intel’s latest IT is the 2% to save the other 98% of carbon footprint.

Gartner’s topic of advanced analytics fits with why I started discussing modeling on this blog.

Advanced Analytics. Optimization and simulation is using analytical tools and models to maximize business process and decision effectiveness by examining alternative outcomes and scenarios, before, during and after process implementation and execution. This can be viewed as a third step in supporting operational business decisions. Fixed rules and prepared policies gave way to more informed decisions powered by the right information delivered at the right time, whether through customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) or other applications. The new step is to provide simulation, prediction, optimization and other analytics, not simply information, to empower even more decision flexibility at the time and place of every business process action. The new step looks into the future, predicting what can or will happen.

The focus on flash memory is interesting vs last year they had server hardware.

Flash Memory. Flash memory is not new, but it is moving up to a new tier in the storage echelon. Flash memory is a semiconductor memory device, familiar from its use in USB memory sticks and digital camera cards. It is much faster than rotating disk, but considerably more expensive, however this differential is shrinking. At the rate of price declines, the technology will enjoy more than a 100 percent compound annual growth rate during the new few years and become strategic in many IT areas including consumer devices, entertainment equipment and other embedded IT systems. In addition, it offers a new layer of the storage hierarchy in servers and client computers that has key advantages including space, heat, performance and ruggedness.

Collaboration has been replaced by Social Computing.

Social Computing. Workers do not want two distinct environments to support their work – one for their own work products (whether personal or group) and another for accessing “external” information. Enterprises must focus both on use of social software and social media in the enterprise and participation and integration with externally facing enterprise-sponsored and public communities. Do not ignore the role of the social profile to bring communities together.

After going through the Gartner list, I realized their list is a pretty close match to what I blog about to discuss green data centers.  I had already registered for the Gartner Data Center Conference in Las Vegas on Dec 1 – 4, and it will be interesting to learn how Gartner aligns with approaches that I see working for others.

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Data Center Summit – Social Networking driving Innovation

KC Mares posted a blog entry on the SVLG Data Center Summit.

SVLG Data Center Summit a GREAT Success

Yesterday, October 15th, after a culmination of a year’s worth of work from over 60 people, the SVLG Data Center Energy Efficiency Summit went off smoothly. We had 44 presenters, 24 case case studies presented and about 450 people at the summit. The event was hosted by NetApp in Sunnyvale. Representatives from numerous Silicon Valley elites, start ups, VCs, and solution companies were present. All case studies were presented from data center end-users, showing what they are doing to reduce energy use in their data centers. We had brief sessions about cloud, carbon reductions, notable sessions called the Chill Off 2, in which various cooling technologies were tested with real load in a real data center, also testing the systems at various temperature ranges. Andrew Fanara with EPA gave a quick update of EnergyStar for servers, storage and networking gear. Paul Scheihing with DOE provided an update of the energy efficiency programs and plans for data centers. I had a candid interview with California Energy Commission Commissioner and old friend Jeff Byron about California’s energy policy, zero-energy buildings requirement, renewable portfolio standards, energy efficiency standards for TVs and other consumable devices, etc. It was fun!

KC goes on to highlight the collaboration and interaction.

Overall, a wonderful event. It was great to see so many industry friends, old and new, and to make new friends. As the co-chair of the program and summit, it was great to see so many people interacting with each other, beginning collaborations stimulated from the excellent case studies presented, which is what the program is all about: Innovation through collaboration. Together we are benefit when we share with each other, and consequently, we as an industry is then improved. It was wonderful to see every presenter do a fantastic job showing off their wonderful case studies. No vendors showing off their product, instead, everyone sharing information.

What this event is proving effective for the data center industry is the power of social networking to drive innovation.  Intel’s Eleanor Wynn gave a presentation that discusses this concept.

Session Title:
Social Networking and Innovation

Abstract:
This session will present research on social network topographies.
Topics include:
• Can social networks generate innovation?
• Effective and ineffective network topologies
• Characteristics of social networks that allow predictions on success
• Current social media technologies at Intel and the types of additional capabilities that are needed to support ongoing collaborative networks across the globe

Speaker:
Eleanor Wynn Social Technology Architect and Principal Engineer
Intel Corporation

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I am talking about social networking, not social media.

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The organizers and sponsors got their value as people stuck around for the cocktail reception.

The cocktail reception at the end of the day drew about 200 people that wanted to stay and chat, make friends, and just have fun. So many thanks go out to my committee, which brought the case studies and presentations to us, which includes but not limited to: Bill Tschudi, Bob Hines, Bruce Myatt, Dale Sartor, David Mastrandrea, Deborah Grove, James Bickford, Kelly Aaron, Mukesh Khattar, Patricia Nealon, Ralph Renne, Rosemary Scher, Tersa Tung, and Zen Kishimoto; to Ray Pfeifer, my program co-chair, who brought this program to us last year and so many of the case studies this year again, and his leadership to keep this program about the end-user; to LBNL, CEC, CIEE and PG&E for helping to fund case studies and support the program; to the many sponsors of the summit. And certainly to SVLG for their staff to help make this summit a reality, and most certainly also their lead person, Bob Hines, for his drive and energy. Overall, an excellent day, full of wonderful people, making new and great little discoveries which each other to advance the energy efficiency and this financial success of our businesses, and helping to lead the data center industry to greater success.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to the event, but I am reaching out to my social network of people who did go to find out comments they had.  And, KC is going to help extract some of the highlights.

Congratulations KC for hosting a great event.

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Data Center Energy Efficiency Summit

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Today, Oct 15 2009, is the Data Center Energy Efficiency Summit, and I really want to attend, but I made a family commitment that conflicted. 

Mission Statement: Driving Energy Efficiency – Green Operations – for Data Centers

Earlier in the week I talked to KC Mares, and we agreed to work together on post event blog entries for those of you who could not make the summit as well.

Also, I plan on sync’ing with others who were able to attend  to get their perspective.

i know I’ll probably regret not making the event as I write blog posts, but family comes before work.

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Green Grid Rings NYSE Closing Bell

Green Grid rang the closing bell on Oct 2 2009 at the NYSE.

NYSE Hosts "The Green Grid" Industry Forum on Data Center Efficiency

10/02/2009

The NYSE highlights data center efficiency worldwide by hosting exclusive panel discussions led by The Green Grid, featuring leaders from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, global business leaders and the New York Stock Exchange. In honor of the occasion, The Green Grid Directors ring The Closing Bell®.

The NYSE will highlight data center efficiency worldwide by hosting exclusive panel discussions led by The Green Grid, featuring leaders from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, global business leaders and the New York Stock Exchange.

The panel discussions serve as a call to action for data center efficiency by fostering conversation about the economic impact of data center energy efficiency worldwide. The Green Grid will conclude the event with the ringing of the NYSE closing bell.

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