Are Telcos ready for Cloud computing?

CNET news has a post on on Cloud Computing listing who the players will be Google, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, VMware, Amazon Web Services, IBM, HP, Hosting companies and Telcos.

Telecommunications and cable companies
One possible industry segment that may surprise us with respect to one-stop cloud services would be companies such as AT&T, Verizon Communications, Comcast, and BT--the major telecommunications providers. They own the connectivity to the data center, the campus, mobile devices, and so on, and they have data center infrastructures perfect for a heavily distributed market like the small-business market (where each small business may be local, but the market itself exists in every town and city).

The problem is the same as it has been for decades: business models and regulatory requirements of these companies make it difficult for them to address software services effectively. These companies have traditionally been late to new software market opportunities (with the possible exception of the mobile market). You don't see AT&T, for instance, competing with others in bidding for a platform-as-a-service opportunity. So until they show signs of understanding how to monitize business applications, they are not in the running.

One other area that the author James Urquhart misses is that gives Telcos an advantage. 

They have access to every account due to their network services.

Verizon says they have 200 data centers worldwide.  The number 200 is hard to imagine.  But, think of all the Verizon telephone switching rooms that are much smaller as technology has advanced.  All that power, air conditioned space in locations where network access is top in the industry.

Add to the list, Deutsche Telecom, Chunghwa Telecom, China Telecom, Singtel.  They all have this advantage and all are looking to add cloud computing.

My bet is Telcos are going to be big.

Read more

Sewage Treatment uses 1.5% of the US electrical grid, same as data center electricity

Here is a piece of trivia for data center geeks.  What other industry consumes the same amount of electricity as data centers?  Sewage treatment.

In the U.S., for example, sewage treatment plants use about 1.5 percent of the nation's electrical energy to treat 12.5 trillion gallons of wastewater a year. According to Heidrich and colleagues' calculations, one gallon of wastewater contains enough energy to power a 100-watt light bulb for five minutes.

This article was created to make the point that there is actually 20% more energy in waste waste than previously calculated.

Sewage holds untapped power

James Cheng / MSNBC.com

At a sewage treatment plant in Renton, Wash., biodegradable solid waste powers a 1-megawatt fuel cell. A new study suggests that wastewater contains 20 percent more energy-rich compounds than previously thought.

John Roach writes:Wastewater streaming out of our households contains nearly 20 percent more potential energy than previously believed, a new study has found.

If confirmed, the results could spur efforts to extract methane, hydrogen and other fuels from this largely untapped resource.

I am sure at some point we’ll hear about a waste water powered data center.  Which would be a methane powered data center.

Read more

Nvidia announces Project Denver high performance ARM processor which includes Server Scenario

I’ve been discussing the idea of ARM servers for a couple of years and had early discussions with some folks with ARM on whether there was a scenario for ARM servers.

Today Nvidia announces an ARM processor targeting the server scenario.

NVIDIA Announces "Project Denver" to Build Custom CPU Cores Based on ARM Architecture, Targeting Personal Computers to Supercomputers


NVIDIA Licenses ARM Architecture to Build Next-Generation Processors That Add a CPU to the GPU

LAS VEGAS, NV -- (Marketwire) -- 01/05/2011 -- CES 2011 -- NVIDIA announced today that it plans to build high-performance ARM® based CPU cores, designed to support future products ranging from personal computers and servers to workstations and supercomputers.

Known under the internal codename "Project Denver," this initiative features an NVIDIA® CPU running the ARM instruction set, which will be fully integrated on the same chip as the NVIDIA GPU.

This new processor stems from a strategic partnership, also announced today, in which NVIDIA has obtained rights to develop its own high performance CPU cores based on ARM's future processor architecture. In addition, NVIDIA licensed ARM's current Cortex™-A15 processor for its future-generation Tegra® mobile processors.

"ARM is the fastest-growing CPU architecture in history," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer of NVIDIA. "This marks the beginning of the Internet Everywhere era, where every device provides instant access to the Internet, using advanced CPU cores and rich operating systems.

The mobile market is helping to drive energy efficient processors and this momentum is spilling over to the server market.  Within two years we should see ARM servers that are using a fraction of current servers.  Which is a big direction for greener data centers.

Why argue over a PUE change of 0.10 when you can drop your power use by 80%.

Read more

Microsoft copies Yahoo!’s chicken coop with tractor shed.

The following blog post is written by Kevin Timmons, ex-Yahoo data center executive.

When Phase 1 opens in Quincy it will be located adjacent to our existing 500,000-square-foot facility.  However, the new datacenter is radically different.  The building will actually resemble slightly more modern versions of the tractor sheds I spent so much time around during my childhood in rural Illinois. 

Tractor shed in my home town of Mt. Pulaski, IL

The building’s utilitarian appearance belies its many hidden innovations. The structure is virtually transparent to ambient outdoor conditions, allowing us to essentially place our servers and storage outside in the cool air while still protecting it from the elements. The interior layout is specifically designed to allow us to further innovate in the ways that we deploy equipment in future phases of the project. And, like any good barn, the protective shell serves to keep out critters and tumbleweeds. Additional phases have been planned for the Quincy site and will be built based on demand.  Those phases will incorporate even more cutting-edge methods to deploy servers and storage in ways that have never been seen before in the industry. 

Scott Noteboom, VP of Yahoo data centers worked for Kevin Timmons and has been pitching the Yahoo Chicken Coop.

Yahoo is Ready for A Data Center Revolution

June 9th, 2010 : Rich Miller

Scott Noteboom of Yahoo during his keynote presentation Wednesday at the 7×24 Exchange conference in Boca Raton, Fla.

Scott Noteboom , the head of data center operations at Yahoo, sees 2010 as a moment of historic opportunity for the data center industry. As growing Internet adoption requires infrastructure everywhere, he says data center builders would do well to note the early history of the automobile industry.

…

The Yahoo Computing Coop
The end result was the new Yahoo data center in Lockport, N.Y., a suburb of Buffalo. Lockport features the first  implementation of the Yahoo Computing Coop (YCC), which operates with no chillers, and will require water for only a handful of days each year. The YCC units are prefabricated metal structures measuring about 120 feet long by 60 feet wide. Each of the three coops has louvers built into the side  to allow cool air to enter the computing area, allowing the entire building to function as an air handler.

If you are interested in the approach’s the Yahoo! gang approach you can go to Megawatt Consulting’s KC Mares.  KC worked for Kevin along with Scott and has been busy designing green data centers for others.

KC has provided data center operations and acquisition services to Google, as well energy and renewable energy options. KC led data center strategy, procuring all data center services and developing several large data centers while leading the charge to reduce energy consumption and costs, achieve carbon neutrality goals and develop large wind and solar projects.

KC MaresKC Mares - MegaWatt Consulting Founder

The Data Center industry is a small world, and people are moving between companies faster than ever.  We’ll see who makes the big career moves in 2011.

Read more

Social Security Data Center, a sinking ship

InformationWeek Government has an article about the current state of the Social Security Administration (SSA) Data Center.

Social Security Data Center Approaching Collapse

An inspector general finds agency operations at high risk due to delays in upgrading its critical infrastructure and software.

By Elizabeth Montalbano ,  InformationWeek
January 3, 2011 02:08 PM

Compromised timing for a new data center transition and a slowdown in application modernization are among the top IT management challenges facing the Social Security Administration (SSA), according to a recent report by the agency's inspector general (IG).

It is projected 2012 the outdated data center may not function, and a replacement cannot be built until 2015

The agency has received more than $500 million so far to replace the outdated center, which is now so severely strained by an expanded workload over its time of operation that it may not be able to function by 2012, according to the report.

However, the SSA does not foresee completing the new center until 2015, a project the IG deems as "imperative" considering the precarious position of the existing NCC.

The SSA’s failure may be the biggest opportunity to reinvent IT in government as a catastrophic event may question their methods.

How many start-ups reached a point where their data center infrastructure (HW & SW architecture) would not scale, and part of the strategy is to be acquired by a big pocket company like Google to port their code on to a better platform.

Read more