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Data Center marketing is sometimes humorous as marketing people try to understand the engineers.
Read this Dilbert comic for a laugh and moments of truth.
I haven't blogged much the last few days as I was immersed in networking opportunities related to Data Center Dynamics San Francisco. This is my 3rd Data Center Dynamics event in SF, but probably at least my 10th, attending events in Seattle, NY, Chicago, and London. At each event my social data center network gets better and I have fun with the DCD gang.
I know the DCD crew well, and ran into one of DCD gang in the bar as I entered the Hilton through the bar, not through the lobby. We continually joked he was invisible and not here as we saw each other through the event. I always go the night before to DCD and meet up with the crew to see who is in town and chat.
So, what did I think about DCD SF. First, the networking opportunities are one of the best in industry. When you see Google, Microsoft, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Intuit, ask.com, VMware, and a bunch of end users networking freely at an event something is working right. The number of people from each company was interesting. You can see who was leveraging the networking opportunity to learn more. And, many had good things to say about the presentations.
One of the subtleties of networking is the quality of your relationships. Seth Godin posted on the idea of signals.
The management of signals
There are two things we can get better at:
1. Getting accurate signals from the world. Right now, we take in information from many places, but we're not particularly focused on filtering the information that might be false, and more important, what might be missing.
2. Sorting and ranking information based on importance. We often make the mistake of ranking things as urgent, which aren't, or true, which are false, or knowable, when they're not.
Dealing successfully with times of change (like now) requires that you simultaneously broaden your reach, focus on what's important and aggressively ignore things that are both loud and false.
Easier said than done.
I happened to run into Dan Scarbrough at SFO as I was leaving the morning, and this post fit in with some ideas Dan and I talked about.
Dan Scarbrough
Co-CEO
Dan is a co-founder of the DatacenterDynamics Conference and Expo Series and is the Managing Director of the company globally, with direct operational responsibility for the EMEA region. He has been working in Business to Business publishing for fifteen years, holding senior roles within UK based publishing companies including Campden Publishing and Sterling Publishing PLC.
We had an interesting chat on how people are becoming more open in discussing ideas at DCD. I told Dan, it was interesting how the end users have figured out they can have deep conversations in the exhibit area and outsiders who want to meet them can't get in. The vendors know if they bother attendees by trying to insert themselves in the conversations, they start off on the wrong foot, by interrupting a meeting. The amount of vendor hovering is much lower than other data center conferences. Vendors/salesman still try to get inserted, but they have less than 30 seconds usually as the high value attendees don't make themselves available for random introductions.
Part of the fun I have attending the conference is watching the patterns of interactions. Who is talking to who? Who is there and who isn't? Who has changed jobs? Who is ramping up? Who is laying off? Who is building? As Seth Godin's post mentions looking for accurate signals, testing facts with others who know, looking for correlations, filtering out the noise and prioritizing is important.
Being an engineer at HP, Apple, and Microsoft it is humorous that I spend more time on people connections than the technology.
But, getting the people element right is part of being an Industrial Engineer.
Industrial Engineering (often now supplemented as "Industrial & Systems Engineering" or "Industrial & Operations Engineering") is a branch of engineering dealing with optimizing complex processes or systems. It is concerned with the development, improvement, implementation and evaluation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, materials and/or processes. It also deals with designing new product prototypes more efficiently. Industrial engineering draws upon the principles and methods of engineering analysis and synthesis, as well as the mathematical, physical and social sciences together with the principles and methods of engineering design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems or processes. Its underlying concepts overlap considerably with certain business-oriented disciplines such as Operations Management, but the engineering side tends to greater emphasize extensive mathematical proficiency and utilization of quantitative methods.
FYI, Stephen Worn,DCD CTO is an industrial engineer as well.
Stephen Worn
CTO / Managing Director North America
Mr. Worn has been involved with industry-leading enterprises and clients around the world for over 20 years as an Industrial FMS and ICT Network and Facilities Engineer; with over eight years in Asia, across the Americas and again back on a pan-European level. Most recently Mr. Worn was the Head of Technology Services for Dimension Data UK, where he was also their acting Practice Manager for Data Centres and Intelligent Buildings.
Stephen has held senior management roles in Nortel Networks as their EMEA Senior Director of Datacentres, at Japan’s Nippon Suisan International, China’s National Center for Industry and Technology, as well as with the Center for Special Economic Zones. Mr. Worn has worked with other Asian multinationals, in addition to his BOD role with OT Partners.
Mr. Worn has supported DatacenterDynamics since its first conference as Chief Technical Advisor and Guest Conference Chairman. He is now Managing Director of North America for DatacenterDynamics as well as Global CTO, and acts as a Moderator at many of the most important events. He holds two masters' degrees.
Also, thanks for my blog readers who found me at DCD SF, it was great to know I can use my blog to connect with others who I may not know, and get to meet face-to-face at a data center event, building a better network. I made some new connections that definitely fit in my network.
I was talking to one of my really smart data center friends, and he showed me a list of things that need to be done to manage the date center process. I looked at the list after he showed me his video feed using my helmet cam idea I wrote about 2 months ago.
May 16, 2010
Shouldn't Helmet Cams be used to document Data Center action?
I've had this idea for a while, and haven't heard of any doing this yet. Why aren't data center events like maintenance and emergency trouble shooting documented with Helmet Cams?
I saw this article in PopSci that shows a helmet cam on a Dutch Marine boarding a German ship occupied by Somali Pirates.
The helmet camera ideas is working for him and we were laughing that people aren't doing this more. And, the video was hilarious too. He's figured out the whole system and he'll share the parts he used when he gets me his own video feed I can share. He is a believer in the method of open sourcing ideas.
So, back to looking at his list of things that need to be done to manage a data center. I looked at the list, decomposed the list into fundamental concepts, and started thinking how the pieces could be integrated into a system.
After a minute, it hit me. "You need to put all these pieces together into a quality control system. And, give the system to a group independent of the data center operations team to audit operations." What group? "Put it in Marketing or Finance so the issues have to go up to CEO/COO if the groups cannot work directly with each other."
One of my first jobs out of college was working at HP in quality engineering and the group reported up to marketing, not manufacturing. Why? #1, the quality of your products affect the customer experience. Who is focused on the customer? Marketing! They can make the trade-offs of customer and warranty impact vs. manufacturing cost to affect margin. Finance could also do this, but I would choose marketing before finance. The last group you want to do quality control is your group who runs your operations. You need to think where the group should exist so they will get rewarded to find problems.
This idea may sound crazy, but luckily we both know the VP of marketing we can float this idea by on his next trip to Seattle.
And, you thought my helmet cam ideas was crazy. Quality Control in the data center is even more radical. :-)
PS, when I say my friend is really smart, he fits in with a few friends who I worked with developing software, creating OS features back when we all worked for Apple. One thing Apple taught us is sometimes when you know what is right you just do it, because there is no data to support your decision as no one has done it before.
I think we have all noticed the green, environmental, sustainability hype is not as much in the news. Newsweek covers this topic.
A Green Retreat
Why the environment is no longer a surefire political winner.
Scott Dunn / Getty Images
Just three years ago the politics of global warming was enjoying its golden moment. The release in 2006 of Al Gore’s Oscar-winning film, An Inconvenient Truth, had riveted global audiences with its predictions of New York and Miami under 20 feet of water. Within 12 months, leading politicians with real power were on board. Germany’s Angela Merkel, dubbed the “climate chancellor” by her country’s press, arranged a Greenland photo op with a melting iceberg and promised to cut Europe’s emissions by 20 percent by 2020. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who called climate change a scourge equal to fascism, offered 60 percent by 2050. In December 2007, the world got its very first green leader. Harnessing the issue of climate change, Kevin Rudd became prime minister of Australia, ready to take on what he called “the biggest political, economic, and moral challenge of our times.” Now, almost everywhere, green politics has fallen from its lofty heights.
The hype of 2007 is catching up to reality.
There are other ways green policies have lost their innocence since 2007. In many ways, green projects have become just another flavor of grubby interest politics. Biofuels have become a new label for old-style agricultural subsidies that funnel some $20 billion annually to landowners with little effect on emissions (only Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol produces any significant savings; America’s corn ethanol and Europe’s biodiesel do not). Germany’s solar subsidies, a signature project in the country’s battle against climate change, are perhaps the most wasteful green scheme on earth, producing a mere 0.25 percent of the country’s energy at a cost to consumers of as much as $125 billion. A leading member of Merkel’s Christian Democrats in the German Parliament says there is growing unease both in his party and in the Bundestag “about the scary monster we’ve created that is sucking up ever larger amounts of money for a negligible effect.”
I've told people many times going green is not a binary thing, it is a commitment of a way to do things. Getting the allocation right when you think of the environmental impact of your actions.
In other words, some of the money spent on current policies that often have only limited efficacy might be better spent on other measures, including protection against the worst effects of warming. What’s more, current economic worries are a reminder that every dollar spent on solar cells or biodiesel is a dollar less for education and other budget priorities. If that means climate and environmental policies in the future will be more stringently measured in terms of the tradeoffs involved given finite resources, that would be a lasting benefit that even Kevin Rudd might appreciate.
It's why a green data center is not identified by a LEED rating or a low PUE.
You can make a greener data center, but it is not simple.
Read the rest of the Newsweek article to get a reflective look at past actions.
eBay and Microsoft both posted press releases on the first customer for Windows Azure private cloud.
eBay and Microsoft Announce Cloud Computing Agreement
Microsoft unveils new Windows Azure platform appliance for cloud computing; eBay signs up as early customer.
WASHINGTON — July 12, 2010 — Microsoft Corp. and eBay [NASDAQ: EBAY] today announced that eBay will be one of the first customers of Microsoft’s new Windows Azure platform appliance for cloud computing. The partnership is a significant joint engineering effort that will couple the innovation and power of the Windows Azure platform appliance with the technical excellence of eBay’s platform — to deliver an automated, scalable, cost-effective capacity management solution.
Microsoft also announced the limited production release of the Windows Azure platform appliance, the first turnkey cloud platform for large service providers and enterprises to deploy in their own datacenters. eBay will incorporate the Windows Azure platform appliance into two of its datacenters to further optimize its platform and achieve greater strategic agility and datacenter efficiency.
Someone made an interesting decision to test Windows Azure to sell Apple iPad's
This partnership follows a successful pilot deployment by eBay of Microsoft’s public Windows Azure platform, which offers eBay the flexibility to deploy certain applications on a public cloud while maintaining the reliability and availability of eBay.com. eBay’s page for iPad listings —http://ipad.ebay.com— is hosted on the public Windows Azure platform.
Here is the cross company executive quote trade.
“Microsoft’s focus on and investment in the Windows Azure platform appliance shows it is committed to world-class cloud computing solutions. eBay has the right blueprint for next-generation software-as-a-service-based applications with our platform’s architecture, scale and reliability, ” said James Barrese, eBay vice president of technology. “Joint engineering on the Windows Azure platform appliance with eBay’s massive, high-volume systems allows Microsoft to demonstrate its leadership in this space and helps eBay improve our user experience through a flexible, scalable and cost-effective solution.”
The Windows Azure platform appliance consists of Windows Azure, Microsoft SQL Azure and a Microsoft-specified configuration of network, storage and server hardware. The appliance is optimized for scale out applications and datacenter efficiency across hundreds to tens of thousands of servers.
“eBay has one of the world’s largest ecommerce platforms, and we believe the Windows Azure platform appliance provides the scalability, automation, datacenter efficiency and low cost of operations that eBay requires to meet the needs of its customers worldwide, ” said Bob Muglia, president of Server and Tools Business, Microsoft.
HP and Microsoft announced their Windows Azure partnership for deploying private clouds. HP includes POD containers and HP networking to provide a complete HP owned solution.
HP and Microsoft to Partner on Windows Azure Built on HP Converged Infrastructure
Collaboration to help transition customers to cloud computing
PALO ALTO, Calif., and REDMOND, Wash. — July 12, 2010 — HP and Microsoft today announced their intention to work together on a Microsoft Windows Azure platform appliance that will enable large enterprise customers to confidently and rapidly adopt cloud-based applications as businesses needs change and grow.
The companies will work together to deliver a complete hardware, software, services and sourcing solution that will accelerate customers’ transition to the Windows Azure platform. Customers will be able to manage the appliance with HP Converged Infrastructure on-premises or choose HP data center hosting services.
Enterprise customers adopting cloud services need a comprehensive approach, including application modernization support, an optimized infrastructure platform and flexible sourcing options. With the new Windows Azure platform appliance, HP and Microsoft will help customers rapidly scale applications, deliver new online services, and migrate Windows and .NET-based applications to the cloud. This latest collaboration extends the $250 million Infrastructure-to-Application initiatives HP and Microsoftannounced in January and will result in HP delivering these offerings:
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Data center hosting services. HP Enterprise Services will combine deep systems management expertise, standardized processes and world-class secure data centers to manage the Windows Azure platform appliances for HP customers. HP and Microsoft plan to release a limited production Windows Azure platform appliance for deployment in HP data centers by the end of the year.
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Converged infrastructure for Windows Azure. HP’s current position as a primary infrastructure provider for the Windows Azure platform, coupled with HP and Microsoft’s ongoing efforts to optimize Microsoft applications for HP’s Converged Infrastructure through extensive joint engineering and development, will allow HP to deliver an industry-leading cloud deployment experience for its customers. The Converged Infrastructure for the Windows Azure platform appliance will include the following:
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HP Networking, which delivers to customers a flexible network fabric that is simpler, higher-performing and more secure, at up to 65 percent lower cost of ownership than competitive solutions.*
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HP ProLiant servers, which are highly dense, highly scalable computing platforms that help customers speed application delivery, better utilize IT resources and achieve strong returns on investments.
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The appliance can be deployed in HP Performance-Optimized Datacenters (PODs), which deliver improved power and data center capacity as well as rapid data center expansion. HP PODs allow customers to increase capacity without the capital expense of brick-and-mortar construction. They will be used in addition to traditional data center deployments.
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Application modernization, migration and integration services for Windows applications.HP’s expertise in complex environments, specific industries, frameworks, processes and resources will help customers modernize, migrate and integrate their applications while balancing costs and speed when adopting the Windows Azure platform.
