eBay’s Data Center Team Cross Pollinates, Recruits Sun’ Dean Nelson to Join

September 7, 2009 Dave Ohara

Cross Pollination is proven as effective method to adapt to change.

Cross pollination introduces the plant to different genes which causes the plant to be able to deal with weather changes easier. Also, with cross pollination the plant is more likely to not be extinct because if one plant dies because of the weather or predators the new genes make it possible that the plant can still survive

eBay was able to use this strategy in its data center group and recruited Sun’s Dean Nelson.

Data Center Pulse Founder Dean Nelson to

Lead eBay’s Global Data Center Strategy, Architecture and Operations

San Jose, Calif.—September 9, 2009— eBay today significantly strengthened the leadership of its data center operations, appointing veteran industry thought leader Dean Nelson as its senior director of global data center strategy, architecture and operations.

Dean brings not only his experience and relationship with Sun’s data center teams, but also the Data Center Pulse organization.

Nelson is the founder of Data Center Pulse, an exclusive group of more than 1,100 global datacenter owners, operators and users in 41 countries that influence the industry from the perspective of the end user. A long-time executive at Sun Microsystems, Nelson has distinguished himself with a long record of innovation managing the company’s global technical infrastructure portfolio.

As cross pollination has mutual benefits, Dean explains his views on leaving Sun.

A Geek In Training

The Sun Will Always Shine

I'm sure I will bore most of you with my historical ramblings, but today signifies a big change in my life. It is bitter sweet. I'm leaving the company that I have literally spent almost half of my life with.

…

My experience at Sun has been nothing but positive. Every one of my positions has been created from an internal need to solve a problem. Each has given me a new perspective in considering how I approach and solve these problems. They have also stretched my skills, got me out of my comfort zone and made me grow personally and professionally.

What part of eBay appealed to Dean?

When I returned I met up with two of eBay's executives, the VP or Operations and the Sr VP of Architecture. They articulated their strategy to reinvest in technologists to fuel the scale of their business. As I listed to their vision and what role I could play to help it come to fruition, I started getting excited. I had never truly appreciated the scale and impact of eBay. A huge population of people make their living on eBay. There are 88 million active users at any given point of the day - and the majority of the financial transactions that feed their 170 million listings, go through one of their companies - paypal. They have also weathered the economic meltdown and are one of the oldest founding internet companies. What resonated with me, was that their business lives and dies on the performance of their datacenters. I had understood this before, but not at this level. They are the epitome of Moore's law. They have an aggressive tech-refresh program that enables them to keep up with user demand. But with great consumption, comes great responsibility. I witnessed a significant commitment to energy efficiency and environmentally responsible data center management through their green team. Their datacenters are core to the business in more ways than one. Their latest blog entry, eBay's Sustainable Data Center, highlights this.

But after all the exciting conversations what I was most impressed with was how aligned and excited the leadership was. They have retooled the approach from the top down and inspired their employees. I felt the excitement, the energy and confidence in their future. They were experienced, focused, aligned and absolutely going after the market. I kept thinking to myself, that everyone I talked to seemed to be just like me - Geeks, excited by technology. I could see many of them burning up their own car radios when they were kids!

What I got excited to see is this part on Green Data Centers.

At Sun I was able to beat our carbon reduction goal 5 years in advance and achieving 25% of the new goal within the first 3 months of 2009. Green is Green as long as it is an integral part of your daily thinking. This seems to be the case at eBay.

There is more and more cross pollination in the industry as Google recruited Chris Malone from HP, Microsoft recruited Chris Belady from HP, Amazon recruited James Hamilton from Microsoft, Digital Realty Trust recruited Mike Manos from Microsoft, and Apple recruited Olivier Sanche from eBay.

Individual companies may think the migration of data center executives is disruptive to business. This migration is disruptive, but in a good way as those companies who can attract the best talent have the highest probability of adapting to the changes in the data center industry.

Keep in mind attracting top talent is about providing the right opportunities to solve good problems. Dean made this point when he left Sun the first time.

The only reason I left Sun in 2000 was the lack of another challenging project.

Economy Down, Reading is Up, Less Energy Use

January 20, 2009 Dave Ohara

Ann Patchett writes in the WSJ about the Triump of Reading.

There will be those who attribute the rise in reading to our current decline of cash, and if that is actually the case I would at least be able to think I forfeited my retirement account to a worthy cause. It's true, as a source of entertainment reading ranks somewhere between cheap and free, depending on where you get your books. A movie can give you two hours of entertainment, but a book can go on for days or even weeks. My friend Lucy loved to point out that she started reading "War and Peace" on the first day of the first Gulf War and was still reading when the war was over. But I do not give all the credit for reading's rise to the collapse of the global financial markets. I believe as a nation we have touched the cultural bottom and are ready to be smart again. I think we're reading more because we've seen as many episodes of American Idol as our collective consciousness can bear and even if we weren't flat broke we'd still be in the mood for a book. Everyone improves under good leadership, which is why we all appreciate a teacher, a librarian, or a bookstore clerk who is willing to steer a child toward a copy of William Steig's "Doctor DeSoto." When Barack Obama, our soon-to-be-author-in-chief, announced on "60 Minutes" that he'd like to see poetry readings in the White House, I found myself thinking that change was going to come.

Adam Niklewicz

It is interesting to think why people are reading more. Is it because of the economy, or Patchett points out “we have touched a cultural bottom, and ready to be smart again.”

Whatever your view, the good thing is all this reading is greener than most other activities. the NYTimes has a blog post about NRDC going after game consoles.

Consumption Study Takes Aim at Game Consoles
By JOE HUTSKO

In a new study about how much energy video game consoles consume, the Natural Resources Defense Council found that consoles in use today consume “an estimated 16 billion-kilowatt hours per year,” which, the report goes on to translate, is “roughly equal to the annual electricity use of the city of San Diego.”

Noah Horowitz, a senior scientist at NRDC and the study’s lead researcher, said gamers often leave consoles on when they’re not playing in order to return to the middle of a level that can’t be saved and reloaded in the same place if the power is turned off.

“That’s the main reason some people don’t turn it off,” Mr. Horowitz said, adding that “although Microsoft and Sony have added power settings options to automatically turn off the consoles after a set amount of time,” console owners often ignore the option “because they’ll lose their place when they’re done.”

…

In terms of overall energy use for the best-selling consoles — whether regularly turned off or not — the report describes Nintendo’s Wii, which draws 16 watts of power when in use, as a “juice sipper.” Microsoft’s Xbox 360, drawing 119 watts while active, sits in the middle. Sony’s PlayStation 3 was rated as the power hog, at 150 watts while in use.

Green Rating for Colleges, 11 Get Perfect Score (99)

September 2, 2008 Dave Ohara

Just last week I blogged about Universities being Greener than Corporations. And, this week Princeton review has a press release on its new Green College Rating.

The Princeton Review developed the Green Rating in consultation with ecoAmerica, a non-profit environmental marketing agency. The criteria for the rating (which ecoAmerica helped formulate along with the rating's data collection survey and methodology) cover three broad areas: whether the school’s students have a campus quality of life that is healthy and sustainable, how well the school is preparing its students for employment and citizenship in a world defined by environmental challenges, and the school's overall commitment to environmental issues. The institutional survey for the rating included questions on energy use, recycling, food, buildings, transportation, academic offerings (availability of environmental studies degrees and courses) and action plans and goals concerning greenhouse gas emission reductions.

11 Colleges scored a perfect 99.

Harvard’s Green Program is interesting for creating a Green Loan Fund.

Harvard College (Cambridge, MA)

Harvard has the largest green campus organization in the world consisting of 24 full-time professional staff and 32 part-time student employees all working to assist the Harvard community in greening all areas of its campus.

Harvard has committed to a 30% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (below 2006 levels) by 2016.

It has established a $12 million revolving green campus loan fund to provide interest free loans to anyone at Harvard that has a green campus project with a payback of 10 years or less.
Since it’s inception in 2001, over $12 million has been lent out to fund 180 projects (lighting, HVAC, heating, cooling and ventilation, behavioral change, insulation, onsite renewable energy etc.).

Atlanta, GA has two colleges

Emory University (Atlanta, GA)

As part of Emory's Strategic Plan and its commitment to positive transformation in the world, sustainability was identified as a top priority of the university. Emory's vision is to develop a model for healthy living on campus that can translate to communities around the globe.

Sustainability initiatives at Emory include: building "green" with all new buildings constructed to LEED standards (with an emphasis on energy and water conservation), integrating sustainability into the curriculum (including the longest-running faculty development programs in sustainability in the country), promoting alternative transportation with a shuttle fleet that is 100% alternatively fueled; recycling Emory's waste stream (65% by 2015), and providing local and sustainably-grown food.

Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA)

Located in the heart of Atlanta, the Georgia Institute of Technology is leading the charge in the green policy, practice, and academic arena as evidenced by:
• 21 endowed chairs and 23 research centers that include significant sustainability components
• A goal that every student takes at least one of more than the 100 courses with a sustainability emphasis
• Institutional environmental sustainability programs that embrace green cleaning, solid waste recycling, drought-tolerant vegetation, and storm water capture and reuse
• A Sustainable Food Project encouraging environmentally responsible dining habits and the implementation of a “green” portal providing a central resource to inform, showcase, promote green behaviors, activities, initiatives and events within the Georgia Tech community.

If you are selling Green Data Center solutions you may want to consider partnering with one of these colleges.

Can You Detect Internal Greenwashers? WSJ Discusses Made Up Problems

August 25, 2008 Dave Ohara

WSJ has an article titled Munchausen at Work.

'Munchausen at Work'

Employees Advance
By Fixing Problems
They Had Created

By PHRED DVORAK

In late 2005, the night manager of a suburban Atlanta restaurant called owner J.D. Clockdale to boast about how well she had handled an irate female customer. The customer "ranted and raved" about a botched order, but calmed down after the manager gave her a free meal, Mr. Clockdale recalls being told.

INVENTING TROUBLE

Experts say a good work environment can dissuade employees from creating "problems" that need to be solved. A few tips:

• Stress teamwork over individual problem-solving

• Be wary of creating office "heroes"

• Watch out for information hoarding

• Ensure bosses are attentive to employees' needs

Source: WSJ Research

The problem: the tale was untrue -- as Mr. Clockdale discovered by reviewing surveillance footage and phoning the customer, who was an acquaintance. He concluded the order mistake was minor and remedied without histrionics.

Mr. Clockdale confronted the night manager, who confessed that she invented the altercation to look good. "She wanted more responsibility," he says.

With the popularity of Green and problems of Greenwashing coming from suppliers, it is quite possible you have internal greenwashers who are either making up problems that they say they solve or even worse they create the inefficient operation and fix it, claiming success. This is scary to think about, but I am sure for people have been in data center industry for a while you have found problems under the category of Munchausen Syndrome.

In Munchausen syndrome, the affected person exaggerates or creates symptoms of illnesses in themselves in order to gain investigation, treatment, attention, sympathy, and comfort from medical personnel. In some extremes, people suffering from Munchausen's Syndrome are highly knowledgeable about the practice of medicine, and are able to produce symptoms that result in multiple unnecessary operations.

WSJ continues with how Munchausen syndrome manifests at work.

The story illustrates a troublesome workplace phenomenon that's now attracting attention: employees who quietly cause problems so they can later take credit for fixing them. Georgia Institute of Technology business professor Nathan Bennett dubs the behavior "Munchausen at work," because it resembles a rare psychological disorder in which sufferers seek attention by making up an illness or inducing sickness in others.

Mr. Bennett says most experienced managers he has interviewed have encountered Munchausen at work and consider it disruptive. Such actions can be hard to detect and eradicate; perpetrators may gain promotions or recognition, encouraging additional attempts. "You get the kind of behavior you reward," Mr. Bennett says.

Solving the problem like any problem first involves detection, and then monitoring the issues.

Spotting the deception is the first step toward stopping it. Health-care administrator Gary Barnes suspected an office manager was causing the problems she took credit for solving at a Pittsburgh clinic where he worked during the 1990s. The manager blamed computer glitches for a delay in depositing insurance checks, then claimed to have fixed the problem. Mr. Barnes searched the manager's desk and found she had kept the checks in her drawer; he fired her.

Keep this is mind when you architect the design of your energy monitoring systems. The problems you may have can be personnel behavior in addition to your equipment. Few people think of tracking who is doing what in the data center.

Can you track efficiency improvements correlations to a person/group?

As mentioned in the WSJ article here is what else you can do.

INVENTING TROUBLE

Experts say a good work environment can dissuade employees from creating "problems" that need to be solved. A few tips:

• Stress teamwork over individual problem-solving

• Be wary of creating office "heroes"

• Watch out for information hoarding

• Ensure bosses are attentive to employees' needs

Source: WSJ Research

How Important is Green for Digital Realty Trust's New CTO Jim Smith? Green used 7 times in Press Release

August 18, 2008 Dave Ohara

Digital Realty Trust has a press release announcing Jim Smith's promotion to CTO. If you don't think Green is important for data centers, the press release has the word "green" seven times.

Digital Realty Trust Promotes Jim Smith to Chief Technology Officer
In CTO Role, Smith Will Lead Digital Realty Trust's Use of Datacenter Infrastructure Technology
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 18, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- Digital Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE: DLR), the leading owner and manager of corporate and Internet gateway datacenters, has promoted Jim Smith to the role of Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Mr. Smith has served as the Company's Vice President of Engineering. As the first person to hold the title of CTO at Digital Realty Trust, he will take the lead role in directing Digital Realty Trust's implementation of datacenter technologies.
"Jim's work has had a profound impact on the way we design and operate all of our facilities, and this promotion to CTO will allow him to play an even greater role in how we utilize technology to drive increasing value for our customers by reducing costs, increasing operating efficiencies, and developing Green operating environments," said Michael F. Foust, CEO of Digital Realty Trust. "He was recently recognized as one of the top technologists in the industry by InfoWorld, and we are proud to call him our own. Digital Realty Trust is changing the face of the datacenter industry, and he is a big part of our success story."

I've watched Jim Smith present multiple times and he has one of the better green data center presentations. When following up with phone calls, he has demonstrated a good understanding of how his facilities are committed towards being green.

Congratulations Jim.