IBM and Univ Central Florida Partner for System Engineering Education, a place to look for Smarter Planet Engineers

IBM has a great marketing campaign with Smarter Planet, and I blogged about how this is great marketing for system engineers.

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IBM has a press release announcing its partnership with UCF for System Engineering education.

IBM and University of Central Florida Team to Prepare Graduates for High-Growth Technology Jobs

IBM helps UCF's Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering students create, develop and manage the smart products and services of the future

ARMONK, N.Y. & ORLANDO, FL. - 14 May 2010: IBM (NYSE: IBM) and the University of Central Florida’s (UCF) Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering (IASE) today announced they are working together to prepare students for jobs in systems engineering, a profession that is critical to the creation of the smart cities, healthcare systems and advanced products and systems of the future.

To help create the systems engineering workforce that is needed to tackle society’s most pressing technology development and integration challenges, IBM is investing more than $2 million in software, in-kind donations and consulting. Through this relationship, UCF students gain hands-on experience using IBM’s most popular systems engineering software.  In addition to its use in classroom activities, the IBM software gives students and faculty tools to compete for grants and participate in advanced research projects. IBM executives and technical staff provide input into the development of IASE curriculum and coursework, and support the university’s efforts to create a learning environment that emulates the real world of systems engineering.

I had a chance to interview University of Central Florida Professor Serge Sala-Diakanda.

The Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering (IASE) promotes the cross disciplinary research and education in systems engineering at the University of Central Florida, and is committed to developing advanced solution methodologies and tools for basic and advanced systems problems in a variety of application domains.

But first a little background.  I have an Industrial Engineering degree, and so glad I chose technology companies (HP, Apple, and Microsoft) instead of traditional manufacturing to work which eventually led me to working more as a systems engineer rather than a typical industrial engineer.

Sometimes it is easier to recognize a job by who the people are with the degrees.  Here is a short list.

Stephen Worn - DataCenterDynamics CTO

Tim Cook - COO Apple Computer.

John Muir - Sierra Club

Mike Duke - CEO Wal-Mart

David Harder - neighbor and part of a group of friends who have Industrial Engineering degrees. Gary Devendorf in another.

Interviewing Serge was a good chance to get into a lot of details on what UCF is doing in Systems Engineering.

IBM and University of Central Florida Team to Prepare Graduates for High-Growth Technology Jobs

Members of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Advanced Systems Engineering gain hands-on experience with IBM’s most popular systems engineering software as they prepare for careers creating the smart cities, healthcare systems and advanced products and systems of the future.

The IBM SW products that UCF uses are in the Rational Family.

Rational Doors

IBM Rational® DOORS®, a family of requirements definition and requirements management solutions, improves quality by optimizing communication and collaboration and by promoting compliance and verification.

Clearcase

IBM® Rational® ClearCase® provides comprehensive software configuration management for any size project.

Rhapsody

IBM® Rational® Rhapsody® is a visual development environment for systems engineers and software developers creating real-time or embedded systems and software. Rational Rhapsody helps diverse teams collaborate to understand and elaborate requirements, abstract complexity visually using industry standard languages (UML, SysML, AUTOSAR, DoDAF, MODAF, UPDM), validate functionality early in development, and automate delivery of innovative, high quality products.

With all these SW tools from IBM, Serge and I discussed the issues for students to get real world experience as it can be big difference between the universities view of system design vs. the business environment.  One of the things it seems like IBM could do is create a System Engineer Marketplace for engineers who are trained with the IBM tools.  This is a problem I addressed by working co-op two times, and eventually having 1 year and 3 months experience as an engineer at HP before graduation.  The time at HP was valuable to put things in perspective as I finished my degree.

Something we didn't talk about is UCF's location in Orlando is close to another place Industrial Engineers work.

System Engineering approaches make sense for green data centers, but one of the things I learned is it is extremely difficult to be the lone system/industrial engineer.  Ideally, you need a community of other engineers to discuss ideas and approaches. 

Google does have an opening for Control Systems Engineer.  But, I doubt Google is looking for a System Engineer trained with IBM's Rational Toolset.  :-)

The role: Data Center Control Systems Engineer

Data Center Control Systems Engineers possess demonstrated design, operation, and construction experience in the areas of complex and mission critical facilities. You will have extensive knowledge of large-scale facilities controls and monitoring systems for all infrastructural systems.

As the Data Center Control Systems Engineer, you have excellent communication skills and are able to work in teams and matrix organizations. You are expected to develop and maintain strong functional relationships across multidisciplinary teams to anticipate future controls and monitoring design requirements. You will be continuously involved in the improvement of plant performance based on historical data collected and collaborate on retrofit projects to improve plant efficiency based on business case justifications. For this position, you will be traveling as needed, possibly up to 50% of the time.

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Will a Google Tablet be the iPad competitor or Netbook? Maybe both - targeting Apple and Microsoft with one device

There is lots of news on Google's Tablet with Verizon.

Verizon, Google Developing iPad Rival

By NIRAJ SHETH

Verizon Wireless is working with Google Inc. on a tablet computer, the carrier's chief executive, Lowell McAdam, said Tuesday, as the company endeavors to catch up with iPad host AT&TInc. in devices that connect to wireless networks.

The work is part of a deepening relationship between the largest U.S. wireless carrier by subscribers and Google, which has carved out a space in mobile devices with its Android operating system. Verizon Wireless last year heavily promoted the Motorola Droid, which runs Google's software.

"What do we think the next big wave of opportunities are?" Mr. McAdam said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "We're working on tablets together, for example. We're looking at all the things Google has in its archives that we could put on a tablet to make it a great experience."

These devices are all part of using less energy in consuming devices connected to data centers.

I am amazed the number of people who think they can get an iPad and leave their laptop at home.  Google realizes this opportunity to create the always connected laptop replacement. 

The device may not be perfect, but no laptop is either.  What trade-offs will Google and Verizon make in the device?

Once, someone gets the right device category defined watch the growth of data centers continue as hyper-connected laptop replacements fuel new usage scenarios which play into Google's hands.

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Google's Eric Schmidt discusses Sharing and Mobile strategy

GigaOm analyzes this video of Eric Schmidt at Atmosphere.

And throws this out as summary of key issues Eric presents.

Schmidt made two specific comments about resource allocation, saying that the hardest and most pressing engineering issues facing Google today are around sharing and mobile. He was talking to the enterprise execs present but his statements were so absolute I think it’s fair to apply them more broadly.

“Companies are about sharing,” Schmidt said. “One of the new things in the last five years about the web is that it enables sharing-sensitive apps.” He continued,

I think of calendars as incredibly boring, but I’m wrong, calendars are incredibly interesting because they’re incredibly shared. So from a computer science perspective, all of a sudden we have our top engineers who want to build calendars. I’m going, what’s wrong with you guys? But in fact it’s a very interesting example. Spreadsheets are similar, the most interesting spreadsheets are highly, highly interlinked, something I didn’t know, and was not possible with the previous technology — Microsoft technology made it very difficult because they were not built in that model.

Google's Don Dodge (recently laid off by Microsoft) adds his perspective on the threat to Office.

Erick Schonfeld at Techcrunch says; "Slowly but surely, Google keeps trying to chip away at Microsoft’s core Office productivity suite with Google Docs, its free online word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation software. Today, Google Drawing is being added to the mix and Google Docs and Spreadsheets is getting a major realtime update."

David Berlind at InformationWeek is much more aggressive. "Make no mistake about it. Google is going for Microsoft's jugular. The deathmatch is on and, at the very least, it's for bragging rights to what we at InformationWeek are calling the "collaborative backbone." It becomes a battle that's less about Google Docs versus Microsoft Office and much more about the collaborative infrastructure behind Google Apps versus Microsoft's SharePoint and Exchange."

And provides a graph to illustrate his point.

This competitive positioning chart illustrates where Google is coming from, and where it hopes to go in the future. It is the classic Innovators Dilemma competitive curve. Time will tell how it shakes out. The move to the cloud seems to be pretty clear. Only the slope of the curve and speed seems to be in question.

Googdocsprogress

And, let's not forget the changes from Mobile.

As the mobile Internet becomes central for both consumer and corporate users, the core product questions are interoperability, security and safety, Schmidt said. “What’s important is to get the mobile experience right, because mobility will ultimately be the way you provision most of your services,” he added, saying that Google considers phones, tablets and netbooks mobile experiences.

These are all things we are thinking about as we get the GreenM3 NPO rolling, and how we will approach data center information sharing.  In some ways you could contrast what we are thinking of in an Open and Transparent approach to data center innovation vs. the status quo.  It is close to the comparison of Microsoft's individual authoring thinking vs. Google's team collaboration.

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Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Nokia, Digital Realty Trust, Dupont Fabros vs. ASHRAE standard 90.1 requirement for economizers limits innovation - comment to be heard

Google's Public Policy blog has a post with some of the most innovative data center operators.

Chris Crosby, Senior Vice President, Digital Realty Trust
Hossein Fateh, President and Chief Executive Officer, Dupont Fabros Technology
James Hamilton, Vice President and Distinguished Engineer, Amazon
Urs Hoelzle, Senior Vice President, Operations and Google Fellow, Google
Mike Manos, Vice President, Service Operations, Nokia
Kevin Timmons, General Manager, Datacenter Services, Microsoft

This collection and probably many others are appealing to ASHRAE to change the requirement for economizers.

Unfortunately, the proposed ASHRAE standard is far too prescriptive. Instead of setting a required level of efficiency for the cooling system as a whole, the standard dictates which types of cooling methods must be used. For example, the standard requires data centers to use economizers — systems that use ambient air for cooling. In many cases, economizers are a great way to cool a data center (in fact, many of our companies' data centers use them extensively), but simply requiring their use doesn’t guarantee an efficient system, and they may not be the best choice. Future cooling methods may achieve the same or better results without the use of economizers altogether. An efficiency standard should not prohibit such innovation.

I know many of these above people and thanks to a friend they forwarded me this link to Google's blog post, I speculated on what drove the economizer requirement:

  1. Without talking to anyone, one assumption is this group who are active in ASHRAE brought up the energy efficiency issue early on, and ASHRAE stakeholders, most likely vendors who make economizers saw an opportunity to make specific equipment a requirement of energy efficiency data centers.  I could be wrong, but it would explain why an organization who sets standards would choose to specify equipment instead of performance.
  2. In many established data center organizations like financials, economizers are/were unacceptable in data centers a few years back.  So, is the move to establish economizers a reaction to those who refused to use economizers for energy efficient cooling.
  3. The ASHRAE consulting community sees a need for their services to meet ASHRAE's economizer requirement.  For example, if in a given area there are X number of hours a year that are available for running economizers, does the economizer need to be run for a specific %.  Hire an ASHRAE consultant to interpret the standard.  I sure can't.

The data center group above proposes the following as a better update to the ASHRAE standard.

Thus, we believe that an overall data center-level cooling system efficiency standard needs to replace the proposed prescriptive approach to allow data center innovation to continue. The standard should set an aggressive target for the maximum amount of energy used by a data center for overhead functions like cooling. In fact, a similar approach is already being adopted in the industry. In a recent statement, data center industry leaders agreed that Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) is the preferred metric for measuring data center efficiency. And the EPA Energy Star program already uses this method for data centers. As leaders in the data center industry, we are committed to aggressive energy efficiency improvements, but we need standards that let us continue to innovate while meeting (and, hopefully, exceeding) a baseline efficiency requirement set by the ASHRAE standard.

It doesn't make any sense that all data centers built to ASHRAE's standards have to use economizers. If you choose to have a waterfront data center and could use the body of water as a heat sink for your cooling, ASHRAE wouldn't allow it or would they?

The public comment period is open until April 19.  If you disagree with ASHRAE's economizer requirement comment on this blog or Google's blog post.

I was able to talk to Google's Chris Malone on this topic after I wrote the above.  The main concern Google has is if you are trying to be innovative in energy efficiency the last thing you want is a barrier saying you have to use a particular technology.

In other words, the standard should set the required efficiency without prescribing the specific technologies to accomplish that goal. That’s how many efficiency standards work; for example, fuel efficiency standards for cars specify how much gas a car can consume per mile of driving but not what engine to use.

Imagine if MPG numbers were mandated by use of hybrid, diesel, or turbocharger.  It is obvious that the most innovative MPG is going to come from those who have the freedom to use any technology.

You should soon see other data center bloggers write on this issue.  If you think this is wrong comment on the Google Blog post or one of the others.

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Nokia acquires MetaCarta, continues investment in geolocation services beyond Navteq

GigaOm's Om Malik has a post with Nokia's CEO on the future of the Mobile industry.

Nokia’s CEO on the Challenges & Promise of the New Mobile Industry

By Om Malik Apr. 8, 2010, 10:50am PDT 11 Comments

IMPORTANT POINTS
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Nokia Chairman, CEO and President Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo has the second-toughest job in the mobile industry — that of turning the decades-old, set-in-its-ways, $58-billion-a-year mobile handset maker into a services-driven, Internet-oriented monster that not only catches up to but surpasses new upstart rivals Apple and Google. The good news is that unlike Palm CEO Jon Rubenstein (who has the toughest mobile gig), he doesn’t have to worry about running out of money anytime soon.

Part of the interview is the hot top of location services.

Location Gives the Internet Relevance

One of the things that gets Kallasvuo excited is location — or more specifically, location-based services. “Location is not an app, instead it adds a whole new dimension (and value) to the Internet,” he said, explaining why his company has made huge investments in location, including its $8 billion purchase of mapping company Navteq. Nokia earlier this year released a new Ovi Maps application that allows it to compete in markets such as India, Brazil and Russia, places where Google and Apple haven’t made inroads just yet.

“Putting location elements into different type of services is a big opportunity which makes the Internet more exciting,” Kallasvuo said. (I’ve written about Nokia’s location-oriented strategy in the past.) Location, along with different types of sensors and augmented reality, will open the mobile world up to different possibilities, he said.

For 2 weeks thanks to a friend who works on geolocation solutions,  I've known Nokia was acquiring MetaCarta.

MetaCarta Inc. is the leading provider of geographic intelligence solutions. MetaCarta’s unique technology combines geographic search and geographic tagging capabilities so users can find content about a place by viewing results on a map. MetaCarta’s products make data and unstructured content "location-aware" and geographically relevant. These innovative solutions make it possible for customers to discover, visualize, and act on important location-based information and news.

And, yesterday the press release went out on MetaCarta's website. And Nokia's. So, now I can reference public sources on the acquisition.

Nokia acquires MetaCarta Inc.

Espoo, Finland – Nokia announced today that it has acquired MetaCarta Inc. MetaCarta, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is a privately owned company which employs over 30 people and has expertise in geographic intelligence solutions. MetaCarta’s technology will be used in the area of local search in Location and other service.

Who is MetaCarta?  Here are what IT analysts say.

Dave Sonnen, Consultant, Spatial Information Management Research
Sue Feldman, Research Vice President, Content Technologies

Relevant Research

 

Whit Andrews, Vice President Research / Analyst
Jeff Vining, Vice President Research / Analyst
Allen Weiner, Managing VP

Relevant Research

Mike Boland, Senior Analyst

Relevant Research

Here are some of the companies who worked with MetaCarta and awards they have won.

  • Technology Partners: ArdentMC, Clickability, EMC/Documentum, Enterprise Search Solutions (ESS), ESRI, Google, Microsoft, MITRE, Northrop Grumman, OpenText, Raytheon, and SAIC
  • Awards: IndustryWeek Technologies of the Year, KMWorld 100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management, and 2-time KMWorld Trend-Setting Products, Red Herring Top 100 Private Companies, Red Herring Top Innovator

If you believe the media, Nokia is irrelevant in the battle between Apple, Google, and RIM.

Apple's iPhone OS 4 may have more than 100 new features, but it established three big targets for Apple: Microsoft, Google and RIM. To some extent, it also showed that Apple considers Palm and Nokia to be irrelevant.

But, I would guess this view exists because media users are mostly iPhone users, then RIM and Android.  With Nokia almost no market share with the US media reporters.  Note: I have a Nokia E71 I can use when I want a high quality phone, and thanks to OVI Maps April 6 release I can get free OVI maps for the phone.

After listening to your overwhelmingly positive feedback and feeling your love for your favourite mobile phone, we have now created a custom version that works on Nokia E71 and Nokia E66.

However, because of technical constraints, it isn’t possible to offer premium content such as Michelin and Lonely Planet guides on these devices.

I wouldn't count out Nokia the way most media does.  Om Malik doesn't.

If there was one point Nokia’s big boss wanted to make before we ended our conversation, it was that the Nokia in 2010 is going to be a lot different from the Nokia of the past. The company has its work cut out for it. The good news, if you can call it that, is that its CEO knows what to do. Acceptance is the first step toward recovery. And for me that’s a good start. I look forward to falling in love with Nokia all over again.

It will be interesting to see Nokia's new phones in 2010.

I am sure we'll here about big data center plans from Nokia to support its growth in services.

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