Employers have problem finding skilled workers

Finding data center staff is one of the top jobs of data center executives and part of the reason they are out at the data center conferences.  NYTimes has an article about the skill worker mismatch in manufacturing.

Factory Jobs Return, but Employers Find Skills Shortage

David Maxwell for The New York Times

Students at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland are training for manufacturing jobs. More Photos »

By MOTOKO RICH

BEDFORD, Ohio — Factory owners have been adding jobs slowly but steadily since the beginning of the year, giving a lift to the fragile economic recovery. And because they laid off so many workers — more than two million since the end of 2007 — manufacturers now have a vast pool of people to choose from.

Yet some of these employers complain that they cannot fill their openings.

The job shortage is for the type of workers in data centers.

Now they are looking to hire people who can operate sophisticated computerized machinery, follow complex blueprints and demonstrate higher math proficiency than was previously required of the typical assembly line worker.

Makers of innovative products like advanced medical devices and wind turbines are among those growing quickly and looking to hire, and they too need higher skills.

Given the labor shortage in data centers, I am curious how many people are coming from other industries.

Employers say they are looking for aptitude as much as specific skills. “We are trying to find people with the right mindset and intelligence,” said Mr. Murphy.

Ben Venue has recruited about half its new factory hires from outside the pool of former manufacturing workers. Zachary Flyer, a 32-year-old Army veteran, had been laid off from a law firm filing room when he applied at the drug maker last summer.

He spent four months this year learning how to operate a 400-square-foot freeze dryer that helps preserve vials of medicine. Monitoring vacuum pressure and temperatures on a color-coded computer screen with flashing numbers, Mr. Flyer said last month that he preferred his new work to the law firm, where he had spent seven years.

The vast majority of you outsource your data center maintenance and operations.

How do you manage your Service Level Agreements (SLA) for your data center maintenance?

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Competing for Top Data Center Talent - energy efficient vs. Green/Sustainable

Green Data Center is a topic that gets discounted by many.  But, talking to a good friend who is passionate about green data centers, he made the point how often being environmentally responsible comes up in his hiring.

If you are hiring someone who is in their 20s.  (Note: I am turning 50, so I am twice as old as the people you are hiring)  If all things are equal between companies are they going to pick your company because you are passionate about energy efficiency or passionate about the environment?

Here is an Google post were efficiency is discussed.

Google is looking for highly motivated individuals to provide leadership and oversight of our state-of-the-art datacenter facilities. Our datacenters are industry-leading examples of innovative capital- and energy-efficient designs in action.

Mike Manos posts on his Uptime Symposium presentation on CO2K.

This year my talk was about the coming energy regulation and its impact on data centers, and more specifically what data center managers and mission critical facilities professionals could and should be doing to get their companies ready for what I call CO2K.   I know I will get a lot of pushback on the CO2K title, but I think my analogy makes sense.  First companies are generally not aware of the impact that their data centers and energy consumption have, Second most companies are dramatically unprepared and do not have the appropriate tools in place to collect the information, which will of course lead to the third item, lots of reactionary spending to get this technology and software in place.  While Y2K was generally a flop and a lot of noise, if legislation is passed (and lets be clear about the very direct statements the Obama administration has made on this topic) this work will lead to a significant change in reporting and management responsibilities for our industry.

Think we are ready for this legislation?

If you are young and idealistic, realizing the past ignorance of environmental impact is making the world worse, who would you pick?  Working for Google or Mike Manos?

It is hard to find passionate intelligent data center staff who want to do the right thing.  But, it is much easier if you make a Green Data Center part of your recruiting.

Some have stumbled on the green data center recruiting benefits, and they feel good.

Do you?

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Microsoft's Christian Belady says time to move on, PUE was the past, Time to optimize the WHOLE

I've had the pleasure of getting to know the two HP engineers who started PUE, Christian Belady at Microsoft and Chris Malone at Google.  here is the HP presentation from March 2007 that Christian gave.

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This references the Sept 2006 paper Chistian and Chris co-wrote on PUE.

PUE is over 4 years old.

Matt Stansberry has an interview with Christian to discuss what is next.  And starts with discussing PUE.

Your data center efficiency metric PUE has been public for about four years. What do you think of adoption at this point?
Christian Belady: I think it's pretty good. If you talk to anyone running a major data center operation, they're using PUE. There are perceived issues with it, comments about people cheating on PUE reporting. But who cares?

Then jumps to what is the next metric.

What do you think about the next level of efficiency metric: measuring the useful work of the data center? Will that kind of metric be available in the future?
C.B.: This is going to take a lot of effort. Look at PUE and see how difficult it was to get buy-in from various stakeholders. A data center productivity metric will be an order of magnitude more difficult to get broad acceptance. It's a very complex metric, and I'm very supportive of it, but it will be really hard to get agreement.

What is Christian working on in Microsoft Research?

But I'm all about the interfaces: the big opportunities are not to dive deep in one area, but to look across disciplines. In my new team, the eXtreme Computing Group, I get to look at the opportunities across hardware, software, applications and security interfaces. What can we do if we really stripped all our legacy IT requirements? What if we blurred the lines between these disciplines and developed a new cloud ecosystem from ground zero. What could that ecosystem look like? How can we see an order of magnitude reduction in cost.

My interest always lies way out in the future. How do we change the game? All the guys in this series have demonstrated that they have made significant changes in the industry. My challenge to all of us is [to ask] how we take the next big step. That's what excites me more and that is what I am working on. Stay tuned!

It is interesting to see how two guys who started down the path of a data center metric like PUE now work on the bigger data center picture.

If you are down in the weeds, maybe you should pop your head up and look at the bigger picture and figure out how what you do affects the whole.

Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon are thinking about the whole, and many others do too.  Also, these are the people who know how to green their data center as they understand the environmental issues and how it affects the long term sustainability of their operations.

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Google's Data Center Secret, Leadership is top in industry

There are lots of opinions out there from Data Center Leadership with Google making an occasional appearance.  Google is the biggest data center operator out there and as one Google employee has said "many dismiss what we do as unique to Google, but we actually work on many issues that are general industry issues."  And, as another friend who knows someone in the Google data center group has said the best manager he has had is Urs Hölzle.  Which fits in with this post I have been thinking about for a while.

Is Google's Data Center advantage due to its leadership?  Not the size of its data center footprint?

For those of you who don't know Urs here is his profile on Wikipedia.

Urs Hoelzle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Urs Hölzle is senior vice president of operations and Google Fellow at Google. As one of Google's first ten employees and its first VP of Engineering, he has shaped much of Google's development processes and infrastructure.

Before joining Google, he was an Associate Professor of Computer Science at UC Santa Barbara. He received a master's degree in computer science from ETH Zurich in 1988 and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship that same year. In 1994, he earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where his research focused on programming languages and their efficient implementation. Via a startup founded by Urs and Lars Bak, that work then evolved into a high-performance Java VM named HotSpot, acquired by Sun' JavaSoft unit in 1997 and from there became Sun's premier JVM implementation.[1]

WSJ had a recent post on the issue that CIOs don't make good leaders.

Why CIOs Are Last Among Equals

Their perceived shortcomings are often real. But they can be overcome.

By PETER S. DELISI, DENNIS MOBERG and RONALD DANIELSON

Are CIOs doomed to forever be second-class citizens among top executives?

We don't think so, but they've got a lot of work to do to avoid that fate.

Chief information officers are more important than ever to the success of their companies, given the crucial role information technology has come to play in every aspect of business. But in most companies, the CIO still isn't viewed as a peer by other senior executives, who tend to see CIOs as specialists lacking the full set of broad management skills. Very few CIOs have become CEOs, especially outside the high-tech industry.

CIO

Wesley Bedrosian

What's holding CIOs back? The problem is that, for the most part, their fellow executives' perceptions are correct. Based on our research, it's clear that most CIOs don't have the broad business understanding, strategic vision and interpersonal skills that it takes to run a company or at least play a bigger role in running one.

Well Urs doesn't have this problem as he is on Google Operating Committee, was Google's first VP of Eng, and has access and influence to Google Executives.


Urs Hölzle
Senior Vice President, Operations & Google Fellow

Urs Hölzle served as the company's first vice president of engineering and led the development of Google's technical infrastructure. His current responsibilities include the design and operation of the servers, networks and datacenters that power Google. He is also renowned for both his red socks and his free-range Leonberger, Yoshka (Google's top dog).

A year ago Google's Data Center team held their Energy Efficiency summit, and there was a peak into the staff who works for Urs like Chris Malone, Ben Jai, Jimmy Clidaras, Luiz Barroso, and Joe Kava.

I was impressed that Urs stayed the whole time at the Summit, and I was able to have side conversations that built upon my interview I had with him back in Oct 2008.  His knowledge and understanding of the business and technical issues are impressive.

So, is Urs the keystone that keeps the whole Google Data Center group running?  And without him the arch (organization collapses).

A keystone is the architectural piece at the crown of a vault or arch which marks its apex, locking the other pieces into position.[1] This makes a keystone very important structurally.[

I would argue as good as Urs is he has built up a solid organization and embedded the importance of the data center infrastructure (buildings, HW, and software) at the executive level.  I am constantly amazed at how much money is spent on data center redundancy, and people are treated as expendable.  If you spend money on getting the best equipment, why don't companies spend money on getting the best people for the data center?

One fact that beats all the rest of the data center leadership is Urs is the richest being one of the first ten Google employees, but it also means he wants Google to survive long term.  What is a sustainable data center organization when Urs leaves?

I can think of other executives who have the talent to present their ideas at the executive level, like Mike Manos and Olivier Sanche. 

Can you think of other Data Center executives who can present compelling presentations to the executive staff, and his organization looks to for data center leadership?

James Hamilton pointed out folks at Netflix and RIM.

After the talk I got into a more detailed discussion with many folks from Netflix and Canada’s Research in Motion, the maker of theBlackberry. The discussion ended up in a long lunch over a big table with folks from both teams. The common theme of the discussion was predictably, given the companies and folks involved, innovation in high scale service and how to deal with incredible growth rates. Both RIM and Netflix are very successful and, until you have experienced and attempted to manage internet growth rates, you really just don’t know. I'm impressed with what they are doing. Growth brings super interesting problems and I learned from both and really enjoyed spending time with them.

Are the companies who have the most sustainable data centers the one who have the best leadership?  BTW, these executives get the value of a green data center strategy.

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Mike Manos Reflects on Uptime Symposium 2008 - 2010

Mike posted his reflections on Uptime Symposium 2010.  But to start let's go back 2 years ago when Mike gave his first keynote at Uptime in 2008.  Here is my post from 2 years ago.

Apr 27, 2008

Microsoft's Mike Manos Opening Keynote Uptime Institute, Green Enterprise Computing

The opening of the Uptime Institute Symposium started with Pitt Turner, saying "what are we doing here?" Green Enterprise Computing is a timely topic for the industry event. I've seen Mike present before, and here is what I got out of Mike's latest presentation as new information to digest.

  1. Mike's call to action for all was to stop being information hogs, and to share with the industry. He gave numerous example, and here are a few Mike shared.
  2. Mike emphasized that in spite of a focus on technology. Microsoft has found having the right people and processes makes bigger impact than technology . Mike states over 50% of data center outages are caused by human error. This contrasts a common method to invest in multiple layers of infrastructure redundancy to achieve uptime.Mike was proud of Microsoft's ability to have a 100% facilities uptime over 7 years by implementing strong and disciplined maintenance programs. Also, redundant infrastructure creates more energy waste.
  3. Technology is not the only answer to energy efficiency. People are the opportunity. Microsoft achieved a PUE improvement from 2.2 to 1.8 with no new technology just by people making changes to existing systems in one of their older facilities.
  4. Mike didn't say this, but bottom line he emphasizes an Amazon.com approach in getting data on everything, and they'll figure out what to do with it after by giving people the information to do the right thing.

It is amazing thing  to see how Microsoft has risen from nowhere a year ago to be the leader in the Green Enterprise Computing with Mike Manos, delivering the opening keynote.

In Mike's presentation this year he discussed C02K to get people thinking about the carbon impact of the data center.  2 years ago Mike was discussing energy efficiency and PUE, now he is discussing CO2K.  Last year he was discussing containers.

If you look at most keynote speakers, they get the spot due to sponsorship at the event, so the presentation is a strategic positioning slot sold to highest bidder.  This year's Uptime had Jones Lang LaSalle as opening keynote.

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Mike's keynote was on Tues last of the day.  Nokia was not a sponsor of Uptime.

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Now you could argue whether the money is worth spending and this is how industry events work.  I would argue Mike definitely got his money's worth.  He didn't have to pay to attend the event or his speaker spot.  As long as people say good things about Mike's presentation Uptime will bring him back as someone to enforce the relevance of Uptime in the industry.

My second key observation this year was the amount of people.  Symposium is truly an international event and their were over 900 attendees for the talks, and if memory serves, about 1300 for the exhibition hall.  I had heard that 20 out of the worlds 30 time-zones had representatives at the conference.  It was especially good for one of the key recurring benefits of this event: Networking.   The networking opportunities were first rate and by the looks of the impromptu meetings and hallways conversations this continued to be an a key driver for the events success.  As fun as making new friends is, it was also refreshing to spend some time and quick catch ups with old friends like Dan Costello and Sean Farney from Microsoft, Andrew Fanara, Dr. Bob Sullivan, and a host of others.

My third observation and perhaps the one I was most pleased with with the diversity of thought in the presentations.  Its a fair to say that I have been critical of Uptime for some time by a seemingly droningly dogmatic recurring set of themes and particular bend of thinking.   While those topics were covered, so too were a myriad of what I will call counter-culture topics.  Sure there were still  a couple of the salesy presentations you find at all of these kinds of events, but the diversity of thought and approach this time around was striking.   Many of them addressed larger business issues, the impact, myths, approach to cloud computing, virtualization, and decidedly non-facilities related material affecting our worlds.   This might have something to do with the purchase by the 451 Group and its related Data Center think tank organization Tier 1, but it was amazingly refreshing and they knocked the ball out of the park.

Mike brings up a problem that many others ran into with the length of the sessions.

My fourth observation was that the amount of time associated with the presentations was too short.   While I have been known to completely abuse any allotted timeslots in my own talks due to my desire to hear myself talk, I found that many presentations had to end due to time just as things were getting interesting.  Many of the hallways conversations were continuations of those presentations and it would have been better to keep the groups in the presentation halls. 

A couple of smart things that were done for Mike's talk - give him a big room to fit the crowd and you know he is going to talk longer than his slot so give the last one in the day.  :-)  Bet you the Uptime Logistics folks were saying "Oh No Mike is going to speak and run over as usual.  Hey let's give the last slot of the day that way he can talk as long as he wants.  And, give him a big room as people like to hear him talk."

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