Open Compute Project heads to NYC Oct 27, 2011 Registration is open on Sept 9

Open Compute Project had its West Coast event on June 17, 2011.  And the next OCP event will be in NYC Oct 27.  Registration will be open on Sept 9 at http://opencompute.org/

Luckily I was planning a trip with some data center executives that week and I have registered myself and others for the event.

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Here is a summary of the last OCP event in Palo Alto.

Reflections on the Open Compute Summit

by Yael Maguire on Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 2:24pm

Facebook hosted the first Open Compute Summit last Friday to grow the community forming around the Open Compute Project.

 

More than 200 people traveled from around the world to participate in the event, representing many of the great technology and finance companies. After morning presentations, the group broke into a series of smaller discussions focused on a variety of topics ranging from server design to management software to how the ecosystem is evolving.

 

Doubling the Compute Density

Amir Michael, Facebook’s hardware design manager, introduced our new initiatives in server hardware, presenting new AMD and Intel motherboard designs that double the compute density relative to our original designs.

 

Instead of placing a single motherboard in each chassis, we’re now building servers with two narrow motherboards sitting next to each other. These motherboards support the next generation of Intel processors and AMD’s Interlagos. To enable these new designs, we’ve also modified the server chassis, power supply (700W output from 450W), server cabinet, and battery backup cabinet.

Looking for how Mobile intersects with Data Center at GigaOm Mobilize Conference, Sept 26-27 SF

Going to a data center show I frequently find I spend more time networking than watching the presentations.  So to learn some new things I saw that GigaOm has a Mobilize conference in SF, Sept 26-27 that I decided to attend.

Here are a few talks that look interesting for a data center audience, and will keep my attention.

CAN INVISIBLE ALSO BE AMAZING? DESIGNING FLUID AND CONNECTED EXPERIENCES

Can we fall in love with things we cannot see? As the bond between mobility and the cloud increases, we will need to design invisible and seductive service experiences. Device-to-cloud interactions will yield new products that will adapt to device capabilities and context. But as bright and attractive as the future might look, we have to consider the ethics of money-making in this new age – who will own user data and is pushing advertising going to ruin user experience? This and more is covered by leading design firm, Fjord.

Speakers:Olof Schybergson - CEO, Fjord

...


TABLETS AND SMARTPHONES BY THE NUMBERS

The growing popularity of smartphones and tablets has opened up new opportunities for mobile content and apps – and raises critical questions, as well. Do different platforms and devices require different monetization strategies or does it depend on which demographic group you are trying to reach? How do different kinds of consumers respond to mobile ads? How much are consumers willing to pay for various types of content? How effective are mobile ads? These questions and more are revealed by audience research giant, The Nielsen Company.

Speakers:Jonathan Carson - CEO, Telecom, The Nielsen Company

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BETWEEN THE CLOUD AND THE CONSUMER

There have been two major tectonic shifts in the communications services world - the shift to the cloud for technology infrastructure and the focus of the core business to be on innovating services. In the grey undefined area between the cloud and the consumer is middleware. Alcatel Lucent, industry giant and supplier of choice to the world's telcos, is laying down huge bets in this space. We talk with the company's leader as to why the industry's future for services innovation lays in the middle.

Moderated by:Chetan Sharma - President, Chetan Sharma Consulting and Analyst, GigaOM Pro
Speakers:Wim Sweldens - 2nd President, Wireless Product Division, Alcatel-Lucent

Iyad Tarazi - VP, Network Development, Sprint

...

ARCHITECTING FOR THE CONSUMERIZATION OF IT

There's a new force to be reckoned with: consumerization. The rise of mobile products like the iPhone, iPad and Android platforms, along with the accessibility of cloud computing services, is radically disrupting conventional IT infrastructures. Resistance may be futile, but as these advances turn the $20 billion/year security industry upside down, smart and agile enterprises stand to realize significant competitive advantages. This talk will delve deeper into the innovative responses demanded of IT departments.

Moderated by:Quentin Hardy - Silicon Valley Bureau Chief, Forbes
Speakers:Tom Gillis - VP and GM Security Technology Business Unit, Cisco

...

3 KEY PILLARS OF ENTERPRISE MOBILITY: APPLICATIONS, DATA AND PEOPLE

Virtualization and high powered smartphones are a match made in heaven for the Enterprise. Most of the arguments involving security and data integrity dissappear. We talk with the visionary CTO and thought leader at technology giant VMWare, about what he sees as being the real outcomes of virtualization on the handset and where VMWare will lead the industry next.

Moderated by:Om Malik - Founder, GigaOM
Speakers:Stephen Herrod - CTO, VMware

...

THE SHAPE OF (THE INTERNET OF) THINGS TO COME

The internet connected toaster never arrived, mercifully, but the continued success of the Kindle and some early internet connected objects points to larger consumer markets for the right product and the right applications. In the talk we hear from The leading thought leader in the In arena of "The Internet of Things"

Speakers:Mike Kuniavsky - CEO, ThingM

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HOW DO WE CONNECT EVERYTHING TO EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE?

We are on the cusp of connecting everything to everything else. eReaders, tablets, netbooks, smart meters, smart cars you name it. But with high bandwidth comes high demands on the chipsets, batteries and the spectrum.Atheros pioneered some of the first chips in the wifi standard. Now they are betting it all onWe talk with their President about why they see WiFi as the way forward for everything being connected to everyone, everywhere and what else he sees being needed to make this grand vision a reality.

Moderated by:Stacey Higginbotham - Senior Writer, GigaOM
Speakers:Craig Barratt - President, Qualcomm Atheros

A view of OSCON by Barton George

I wasn't able to make it to OSCON and one of the people I would have spent a lot of time with is Dell's Barton George.  I met Barton at Gartner Data Center Conference, and we frequently run into each other at other technology conferences.

Here are a few of Barton's OSCON posts.

OSCON: The Data Locker project and Singly

Who owns your data?  Hopefully the answer is you and while that may be true it is often very difficult to get your data out of sites you have uploaded it to and move it elsewhere.  Additionally, your data is scattered across a bunch of sites and locations across the web, wouldn’t it be amazing to have it all in one place and be able to mash it up and do things with it? 

OSCON: ex-NASA cloud lead on his OpenStack startup, Piston

Last week  at OSCON in Portland, I dragged Josh McKenty away from the OpenStack one-year anniversary (that’s what Josh is referring to at the very end of the interview) to do a quick video.  Josh, who headed up NASA’s Nebula tech team and has been very involved with OpenStack from the very beginning has recently announced Piston, a startup that will productize OpenStack for enterprises.

OSCON: How foursquare uses MongoDB to manage its data

I saw a great talk today here at OSCON Data up in Portland, Oregon.  The talk was Practical Data Storage: MongoDB @ foursquare and was given by foursquare‘s head of server engineering, Harry Heymann.  The talk was particularly impressive since, due to AV issues, Harry had to wing it and go slideless.  (He did post his slides to twitter so folks with access could follow along).

Getting ready for 7x24 Exchange 2011 Fall Conference, Nov 13-16

I received the save the date e-mail for 7x24 Exchange, and plan on attending my 2nd conference, and have much bigger plans.

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#1 I have been working with David Schirmacher, VP of 7x24 on a panel discussion with some big names to discuss an interesting topic for the attendees.  One of the things that feels good is the people we hope to have on the panel are two executives who knew of each other, but never really chatted until I got them together at Data Center Social 1..0 at Uptime Symposium.  If all goes well, the specifics of who and what will be discussed will be firmed up in the next month.

One of the things that is refreshing is the session slot is assigned at 7x24 based on the audience interest, not on sponsorship package purchased by the speaker.

#2 We'll have another version of Data Center Social with thought leaders in the data center industry.  At past events we had tried to have the rule no vendors at the data center social, but with any rule there was an exception.  So modifying the rule, thought leaders who work at companies that are considered vendors can attend, but that brings up one of the other rules.  If the ego is too big, we in general don't want to invite them why?  Consider this post for some reasons why a big ego is bad karma.

While people with big egos seem confident and even intimidating on the outside, they're most often driven by low self-esteem and a lack of confidence inside.
...

Note the fact that it's their way or the highway. They equate compromise with loss. Egotistical people also feel that they have to be the center of attention to validate themselves. They often neglect the needs of those around them and think only in terms of what will suit them.

Just because everyone knows you doesn't mean you are a thought leader.  Thought leaders are not necessarily well known.

For Data Center Social 3.0 at 7x24 Exchange Fall Conference, we'll continue with what we know has worked in the past, but also try some different ideas to bring in new people.  Keep in mind this is not necessary an exclusive club, but a group of people who enjoy meeting others who are not satisfied with the past.  A group who are thought leaders.

Thought leader is business jargon for an entity that is recognized for having innovative ideas.

The term was coined in 1994, by Joel Kurtzman, editor-in-chief of the Booz, Allen & Hamilton magazine, Strategy & Business. "Thought leader" was used to designate interview subjects for that magazine who had business ideas that merited attention.[1] Among the first designated "thought leaders," were British management thinker, Charles Handy, who advanced the idea of a "portfolio worker" and the "Shamrock Organization", Stanford economist Paul Romer, Mitsubishi president, Minoru Makihara, and University of Michigan strategist, C.K. Prahalad, author of a number of well known works in corporate strategy including "The Core Competence of the Corporation" (Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1990); and his co-author, Gary Hamel, a professor at the London Business School. And at the turn of the millennium Chris Harris in his trend leading insight book Hyperinnovation, the first treatise to begin to address a rapidly interconnecting, growing, technologically innovative world.