A Losing Strategy in the Data Center Wars, choosing a defensive only strategy, who is on the offensive?

May 16, 2010 Dave Ohara

The data center industry is highly competitive as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo, and others fight for market share. In a conversation with a data center executive he made a point about the infamous attacks on Google and others that few have an offensive strategy with almost all the effort spent on defense.

Researchers identify command servers behind Google attack

By Ryan Paul | Last updated January 14, 2010 8:45 AM

VeriSign's iDefense security lab has published a report with technical details about the recent cyberattack that hit Google and over 30 other companies. The iDefense researchers traced the attack back to its origin and also identified the command-and-control servers that were used to manage the malware.

The cyber-assault came to light on Tuesday when Google disclosed to the public that the Gmail Web service was targeted in a highly-organized attack in late December. Google said that the intrusion attempt originated from China and was executed with the goal of obtaining information about political dissidents, but the company declined to speculate about the identity of the perpetrator.

The defensive move by Google is good.

Hours after announcing the intrusions, Google said it would activate a new layer of encryption for Gmail service. The company also tightened the security of its data centers and further secured the communications links between its services and the computers of its users.

The point the data center executive made was "How can you win when you have no offense?"

Data Centers are currently designed mostly with defense capabilities for cyberattacks. What are the offensive capabilities that should be designed in?

Sun Tzu's Art of War may help give you some ideas on how you could take offensive positions.

The Art of War is one of the oldest and most successful books on military strategy. It has had an influence on Eastern military thinking, business tactics, and beyond. Sun Tzu suggested the importance of positioning in strategy and that position is affected both by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of competitive actors in that environment. He thought that strategy was not planning in the sense of working through an established list, but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions. Planning works in a controlled environment, but in a changing environment, competing plans collide, creating unexpected situations.

One interesting strategy is what is discussed by Moeletsi Mbeki talking to Africom

'If I were the head of AFRICOM, I would identify the critical countries in Africa that have regional influence, which can influence their neighbours and then try and find a way to stabilise those countries, so that they can exercise hopefully a more positive influence on their neighbours, which will then mean that AFRICOM itself doesn't have to be involved in each and every country. We have 54 countries in Africa. You can't possibly be involved in all 54 countries. So you have to identify the countries, which make a difference to other countries,' Mbeki said.

What would happen if the top data centers operated collaboratively to take the offensive in cyber attacks?

Nintendo's New Redmond Green Headquarters also has an energy efficient data center

May 13, 2010 Dave Ohara

Seattletimes has an article on Nintendo's new Green HQ in Redmond.

Nintendo celebrates opening of new headquarters in Redmond

Nintendo of America opened the new headquarters of its North American operations in Redmond Thursday — a gleaming, modern facility...

By Katherine Long

Seattle Times Eastside reporter

BENJAMIN BENSCHNEIDER

The new Nintendo headquarters in Redmond. The 300,000-square-foot-building is a low-slung, four-story building that replaces one of the company's other three buildings.

Nintendo of America opened the new headquarters of its North American operations in Redmond Thursday — a gleaming, modern facility with all kinds of environmentally friendly touches throughout.

The 300,000-square-foot-building, which houses about 650 employees — roughly half the company's Washington staff — is a low-slung, four-story structure that replaces one of the company's other three buildings constructed in the early 1980s. It's on a 10-acre site on the Nintendo campus, just west of State Route 520.

I found it interesting that Nintendo's President Satoru Iwata thought BIM was unique. Maybe BIM is unique in office space, but everyone has BIM capabilities in data centers.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata flew in from Japan just to celebrate the opening, and talked of the importance and symbolism of the building to his company and to the Redmond community. Gov. Chris Gregoire helped in the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Iwata said the building is unusual because the contractor, Turner Construction of Seattle, modeled "every pipe, wire, duct and beam" by computer beforehand. That allowed workers to shave months off the time to construct it.

The Green features called out were.

The 75,000-square-foot roof is literally green — it's planted with a low-growing ground cover called sedum. The plants help moderate the temperature inside and absorb rainwater.

Inside, the floors' central corridors are made of bamboo, considered a "green" material because it grows to maturity quickly. The lights are on motion-detecting sensors and automatically dim when there is an abundance of natural light.

And, air-side economizers for the data center.

The headquarters is home to all of the company's high-powered computers that serve Nintendo's online gaming system and other corporate computer needs. It's cooled primarily by air from out-of-doors, and that is expected to cut the cost of cooling — a major source of energy consumption for computer servers — by as much as 80 percent.

Here is the story of Nintendo being Redmond's first high tech company, not Microsoft.

Redmond Mayor John Marchione was just 17 years old in 1982 when his mother, Doreen, then a member of the Redmond City Council, told him a game company called Nintendo was thinking of relocating to Redmond.

Her teenage son had never heard of it. But then she mentioned Donkey Kong, and the light bulb went on; he'd played the video game at a pizzeria.

"Nintendo gave Redmond its first famous technology company, because at the time Microsoft was in Bellevue," said Marchione. "It's been a great fit, because we're a great community to live in."

There is also electric charging stations getting ready for the release of the Nissan Leaf.

seven electric-vehicle recharging stations in the parking garage, to name a few.

I live in Redmond, drive by Nintendo all the time, and know a few folks at Turner Construction. But, I am not going to keep any hopes up for getting any inside details. As TechFlash reports on the security.

I toured the new headquarters along with other attendees after the ceremony, but the company wouldn't allow photos or video inside, citing security concerns. The exterior shots below are from Nintendo.

Being Green isn't just for the environment, it is good for the morale of the employees who work there.

"Hopefully this new building will help (employees) to be even more creative and productive, and continue to put smiles on the faces of our consumers," said Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's president, who flew in from Japan for the opening ceremony, attended by Gov. Chris Gregoire and other dignitaries, including Mario and Luigi.

A day of intense meetings, asking what is the future of data centers & evolutionary economics, a view out of the window

May 13, 2010 Dave Ohara

Today was a long day, I was up at 6:15a to catch a bus from Lake Oswego, OR to downtown Portland, then to Portland Airport to meet a cloud computer operations director to introduce him to some ideas that enable adapting to changes if you adopt evolutionary economics ideas.

Evolutionary economics deals with the study of processes that transform economy for firms, institutions, industries, employment, production, trade and growth within, through the actions of diverse agents from experience and interactions, using evolutionary methodology.

The data center is ready for a transformation. Cloud computing is helping to push things in a direction, but there is much more beyond cloud computing.

The thought experiment we went through is what happens if the data center industry adopts an information sharing methodology as opposed to an information hoarding, accelerating change in the industry, asking tough questions of what problems should a data center be solving. Being open to discover new ways to look at the problems and ask new questions, driving more innovation.

Here is a bit more explanation of evolutionary economics.

Ideas are articulated in language and thus transported into the social domain. Generic ideas, in particular, can bring about cognitive and behavioral processes, and in this respect they are practical and associated with the notion of ‘productive knowledge’. It is generic ideas that evolve and form causal powers underlying the change. Evolutionary economics is essentially about changes in generic knowledge, and involves transition between actualized generic ideas. Actual phenomena, being manifestations of ideas, are seen as ‘carriers of knowledge’.

Three analytical concepts corresponding to ontological axiomatics are thus:

(1) carriers of knowledge,

(2) generic ideas as components of a process, and

(3) evolutionary-formative causality.

After a long day of intense thinking, I am riding the train back to Seattle. So glad I didn't drive, so I can get some rest and look at the window, taking some time to reflect.

I'll wait for the cloud computing operations director to write his own blog entry, but that may take a while. As his head is probably just as tired as mine.

Open Leadership - can it work in the data center where control leadership is the norm?

May 12, 2010 Dave Ohara

I was having an interesting e-mail conversation with a data center and how well a local monthly data center event is working to build better relationships with the community of data center operators. The openness of data center discussion flies in the face of secrecy typical of data centers. Data Center events try to stimulate open conversation, but given the irregularity of events can you build a relationship by attending?

Open Leadership is a new book being released by Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell. Josh Bernoff the other co-author of Groundswell writes.

I found some parts of the book a lot more useful or interesting than others. Here are three good parts.

Sandbox covenants. These are the rules organizations set up to determine what sorts of limits and conventions there are on openness. The book includes a link to social media policies of a bunch of corporations, not yet live, but I am looking forward to seeing that. This discussion, in Chapter 5, goes a long way to helping bridge the gap between social media backers within companies and corporate policymakers.

Organizational models for openness. Charlene describes three types of organization: organic, centralized, and coordinated, and shows when each one makes sense. Given all the questions I get these days about organization for social, this is quite relevant.

Leadership mindsets and traits. Chapter 7 classifies leaders according to whether they are optimistic or pessimistic, and whether they are independent or collaborative. Anyone who has ever had a boss will find this instructive. This is a fascinating way to look at leadership.

There are people who are realizing an Open approach is powerful, but difficult for most. The book will be available on May 24.

As Li explains, openness requires more—not less—rigor and effort than being in control. Open Leadership reveals step-by-step, with illustrative case studies and examples from a wide range of industries and countries, how to bring the precision of this new openness both inside and outside the organization. The author includes suggestions that will help an organization determine an open strategy, weigh the benefits against the risk, and have a clear understanding of the implications of being open. The book also contains guidelines, policies, and procedures that successful companies have implemented to manage openness and ensure that business objectives are at the center of their openness strategy.

I'll post later on the data center social event that is taking an Open approach to Data Center Networking. And, I plan on adding a trip to an event to see for myself how it works.

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

May 12, 2010 Dave Ohara

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.