Where's Google Data Centers? Who cares?

SearchDataCenter.com has a post about Where are Google’s data centers and why do we care? And, the author asks.

So the question that’s nagging me is, what can everyone else learn from Google’s experience? Secrecy is good for business, but up until what point? I come to TechTarget with a background in journalism and public affairs, so this question is not unfamiliar to me. Many companies rely on keeping their activities and intellectual property secured, it’s common in business. But, is Google being too extreme? Do their data center facility locations really need to be kept on the “down-low”? And why do datacenter insiders care?

I've seen the posts as most of you have on the Google Data Center FAQ and the map created from the data.

Does anyone say hey look where Google went, let's follow them?

Why is Google secretive?  Maybe they are just paranoid.

Have others noticed how quiet Google has been lately in regards to their data centers?  Maybe Google doesn't like the negative PR?

Google’s data centers have had a lot of attention around the country. In Oregon, initial secrecy surrounding the company’s development of The Dalles facility was an object of a lot of public discussion, which resulted in the facility earning the moniker of “Voldemort” (a reference to the fact that the Harry Potter series character is most commonly referred to as “He Who Must Not Be Named,” and that local officials couldn’t say the “G” word while the facility was under construction). But Google let up a bit and put on a more public face in 2007, including a site tour by local reporters from The Dalles Chronicle. Google had changed its tune on keeping the activities on site “super secret” after a public backlash concerning the 15-year tax break the company received from the State of Oregon, and power consumption concerns. Indeed, the energy consumption of the company’s data centers has attracted national media attention, beyond IT-focused outlets. As the company has grown in power over the past ten years, it has increasingly attracted attention, first with its quirky dot-com work environments and employees (including Google bean-bag chairs that grace the Googleplex), to controversy over acceptance of Chinese government restrictions over search-engine deployment.

I don't care. Do you care?  Maybe nobody really does care other than the curiosity.  As the author from SearchDataCenter.com says.

So the question that’s nagging me is, what can everyone else learn from Google’s experience?

For now, the only good reason I can see to write about Google's data centers is to drive traffic.  :-)

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IBM Network Engineer says Network Convergence enables Green Data Center

EETtimes has an article about Data Center Convergence No longer a Pipe Dream with a quote from Renato Recio an IBM Distinguished Engineer.

"Somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies are going to be building data centers in the next three years," said Renato Recio, a chief engineer for server networking at IBM Corp. "They are looking for technologies to make them more green, and this network convergence group has that value--this rings for customers," he said.

The moves fuel a broad industry drive to run networking, storage and clustering traffic over a single, mainstream pipe in tomorrow's data centers. The aim is to create one converged fabric, reducing the cost and power requirements of supporting today's multiple switches, adapter cards and cables.

The Green aspect comes from the power of the network chips.

A broad group of vendors announced their first products for Fibre Channel over 10-Gbit Ethernet last week. Separately, startup SolarFlare today is expected to announce a transceiver that can power 10-Gbit Ethernet up to 100 meters over copper on a single 65-nanometer CMOS chip that dissipates just 5.5 watts.

The work on the 10GBase-T standard for Ethernet over copper lines only indirectly fuels the network convergence. Its primary aim is to lower the cost of and expand the market for 10-Gbit Ethernet, which has been limited to expensive optical and short-reach copper cables to date.

Running 10-Gbit signals over copper typically has required multiple chips using as much as 12 W. The SolarFlare SFT 9001 transceiver could slash the power budget in half, but the company is still characterizing first silicon on the part, which it hopes to sample in May at less than $100.

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Green Market is close to Creative Class, see BMW Ad

Ran into Richard Florida's creative class site.  And his thought leadership reminded me of the Green Market which closely matches his definition of the Creative Class.  Below is a video his company created for BMW which could have been created for a company who wants to be greener and reach the green market/creative class.

    • 40 million Americans. 30% of the US work force with spread out across the US, but concentrated in creative centers. 
    • People with a passion for creativity and innovation.
    • Affluent
    • Creative Class and BMW - core for sustainable ideas, real and useful solutions, doing the right thing vs. popular thing,
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Microsoft Employee comments on Microsoft's data center group

Watching the news spread on Microsoft's data center container strategy, found this post by Steve Clayton a Microsoft employee.

The whole datacenter topic is one I expect to find myself talking about more and more over the next year. A whole new game is emerging that some call Cloud Computing. One way of building these datacenters is through the use of containers and Michael Manos from our Data Center Services group talked about this yesterday at the AFCOM Data Center World conference. (Wow, there is a world conference for datacenters).

Christian Belady in the same group as Michael has a rather interesting job title - Principal Power and Cooling Architect.

You may chuckle but this stuff is important. Both the datacenters and and the power and cooling stuff. Datacenters that are so large you can see them from the moon will require a lot of power….and a lot of cooling. In an increasingly eco friendly world, this needs to be done in an environmentally friendly way.

And, gives a small peak inside how Microsoft employee's view the Microsoft datacenter group.

I can’t say a great deal about our datacenter group but I will say this – they’re incredibly thorough about their work. In a way I wish some other groups were to be honest. When you build something that costs many many millions you need to be damn sure you chose the right place and approach. These guys impress me a lot and I’m not alone

Steve Clayton's latest job at Microsoft is here, and posted below which gives a level of credibility in what this guy says about Microsoft's datacenter group.

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"This transformation from software to software-plus-services is a very, very big deal for our company," - Ray Ozzie

Today I started a new gig at Microsoft that has a lot to do with the image above. Hugh kindly drew this a few months back and I was quick to snag it as I knew it would become my new card. Basically I'm working in a part of the organisation known as Microsoft International and helping to shape how we talk about Software + Services internally and externally. It's a big new adventure and I'm really looking forward to it. It means I'm no longer managing the PTS team which I'll miss as they're just a great bunch of guys doing outstanding work, but the opportunity to be involved this deeply with S+S was something I couldn't pass up. I'll have involvement in a few other projects I can't talk about but S+S will be my main schtick.

Given that, it's probably a good time to clear up some confusion on what Software + Services is (and isn't), so here goes...

  • Software + Services is not Microsoft's answers to SaaS
    Or Web 2.0 or SOA. In fact, S+S encompasses all of those things. The best explanation of this comes from Sanjay Parthasarathy at our Worldwide Partner Conference this year when he discussed the notion of S+S. He thinks about Web 2.0 as the experience, SaaS as the delivery and SOA as the composition and federation. So if we think about something like Exchange it uses SaaS as a delivery model (for OWA) and is a Web 2.0 experience in it's use of data presented with AJAX.
  • Software + Services is not a Microsoft only thing
    It's an industry thing and when you step back and look this becomes increasingly obvious. Lets take a few examples to explain this point.
    • Salesforce.com is probably the most oft quoted example of SaaS and initially they were a pure play SaaS vendor with a no touch (assuming a browser) client impact and service which is hosted in the "cloud". Salesforce now offer a client for their service. There are scenarios which demand it, not least offline.
    • Google Gears is a good example of the darling of Web 2.0 providing Software + Services. I can now take Google Reader offline and read it when I don't have connectivity - on a plane for example.
    • XBOX Live is a good Microsoft example of the combination of local software connected to a cloud service to provide mutliplayer gaming and a marketplace.
    • Exchange is possibly the best Microsoft example where you can have an email server that his "on premise" (in your office), hosted (by a partner) or even provided by Microsoft. You can then access that service from a rich client on a PC (Outlook), a pure web client (Outlook Web Access) from a mobile device using a rich client (ActiveSync) and now even a voice interface with no client (Outlook Voice Access).
    • Apple is also a great proponent of S+S, though you'd never hear them call it that. iTunes + iPod = Software + Services. Perhaps even more so with the iPhone which makes much of the fact it connects to YouTube and the iTunes music store from a rich client on a device.
    • eBay TurboLister and eBay Desktop are two rich clients that connect to one of the worlds most popular Internet services.
  • Software + Services is a pretty big thing for Microsoft
    Ray Ozzie isn't known for hyperbole so the statement at the top of this post should be taken at face value. The breadth of Software + Services is vast. It encompasses everything from Zune (note iPod above), XBOX Live, Live services (such as Virtual Earth), Biztalk Services, Microsoft Online and more.
    Ray's talk at the Financial Analyst Meeting earlier this year gives you an indication of the breadth, and the depth of investment. Basically it touches almost all of Microsoft and I'm struggling to think of one area it doesn't affect. However, much as I'd like to think I'm going to work on all of these products and services that simply isn't true or indeed feasible. What I will be doing is helping make this understandable both inside and outside of Microsoft. That's what I think I'm okay at - synthesizing lots of inputs on technology and turning them in to something an audience can understand.That's where the Geek In Disguise thing came from after all (thanks Sarah) and to quote Charles Mingus:
    Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

I'm not saying I'm creative (more simple) but the quote does capture why I try to do.

Anyhoo, that's probably enough for now but this is what you'll hear a little more about from me over the coming months. Rest assured though, this blog will continue to be home to an eclectic mix of technology, design, gadgets, Microsoft, industry and other random stuff I find. I hope you keep coming back and if you have question on S+S, fire away!

Your loyal blogging servant, Steve...

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ITBusinessEdge - Will Green Data Centers Endure?Ask the opposite question - Will Brown/Black Data Centers be extinct in 5 years?

ITBusinesEdge, posts a blog on Will Green Data Centers Endure?

Is green technology set to become a permanent fixture of the IT industry, or is it just a fad – and one that’s getting ready to “jump the shark?”

Probably a little of both.

At the moment, all indications are that enterprises around the globe are taking seriously the concept of the “green” data center. While some of it can be attributed to the desire of IT decision-makers to do what’s right by Mother Earth, it’s also true that doing what’s right goes hand-in-hand with adding cash to the bottom line.

The latest report on green technology from Datamonitor estimates that nearly 20 percent of top enterprises have adopted at least some sort of green technology, the vast majority of which is probably server virtualization. Three quarters of CIOs and IT managers say adopting green business practices, like reducing energy consumption and improving recycling practices for decommissioned hardware, is a top aspect of their data center strategies.

Professional organizations are also stepping up their efforts to devise and help implement green business practices. The Storage Networking Industry Association has teamed up with The Green Grid to develop educational programs and spearhead collaborative development efforts aimed at making the storage side of the house more efficient by reducing the power draw to both run and cool storage systems.

I have posted 210 entries to my blog in the 6 months I started blogging on Green Data Centers.  I would have never thought I could get these many posts on the subject, but it has been easy to find Green data center subject matter, and this is still the early adopter stage.  As energy costs increase and more people run into power and cooling issues the interest is going to grow quickly.

The other question to ask is Will Brown/Black Data Centers be extinct in 5 years?  Will data centers that are oblivious to their effect on the environment survive?  Will they be so inefficient that they'll become the equivalent of pre-catalytic converter cars that are polluting the environment and governments will target their retirement?  The data center construction industry would be ecstatic if government's obsolete data centers over 5 years old that have not been upgraded.

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