Mike Manos moves from Nokia to AOL

January 28, 2011 Dave Ohara

Mike Manos makes another career move, and lands at AOL.

I’ve Got Mail….A new Aol.

January 27, 2011 by mmanos

You may have seen the announcement today about my recent decision and move to join the new leadership team at Aol. To some of my friends in the Technorati, and most specifically the Valley, this move probably seems very contrarian. Having built some of the largest cloud infrastructure’s in the world, re-aligning operational processes at massive scale, Aol at first stroke may seem an odd choice. I have worked in some of the largest multi-national companies in the world, I have successfully (and unsuccessfully) launched start-ups, have been a cost center and carried a P&L. I think I have a pretty good understanding of the range and complexity of challenges (especially from a technology perspective) from small business to large. Across the spectrum of these types and sized companies you get a different feel. Different cultures. Different attitudes. Different Vibes.

Mike has in a short period built an impressive list - Disney Interactive, Microsoft, Digital Realty Trust, Nokia, and AOL.

We'll hopefully hear more from Mike as he settles into AOL.

In the coming days/weeks/months, I hope to share many of the exciting things we will be endeavoring to accomplish and give you a real taste of some of the big changes I will be attempting. As always, technology and operational processes will be key to the success of the mission the company is on and I have some very definite ideas on how we can leap frog current thinking in this space and ensure that our technology and operational approach is no only a strategic value to the business, but also industry leading in execution.

Analysis: 4 reasons why Verizon bought Terremark

January 28, 2011 Dave Ohara

When Verizon announced its acquisition of Terremark I was meeting with Silent Partner's Kevin Francis. We chatted about what it meant to the industry, and he quickly fired off some e-mails to a few others to discuss the implications of Verizon purchasing Terremark and how it affects the industry.

Kevin gave me his 4 reasons why he thinks Verizon bought Terremark. Here is the official Verizon press release if you want to hear the official company line. And where Terremark's data centers are.

Reason #1. What is the most valuable asset Terremark has?

Control the largest and most strategic Latin American gateway in the US.

just as Google acquired 111 8th Avenue to create a gateway or hub for International carriers and ISPs to meet and interconnect with one another and Google, Verizon gains control of the largest access point for Latin American carriers (and therefore eyeballs) in the United States. This gives them an immediate and frankly scary amount of control over the ingress / egress of US traffic to Latin American eyeballs and vice versa. Global Crossing has traditionally been the one to “own” Latin America based upon their fiber assets in region. Verizon now trumps GX by controlling the main interconnect point and peering fabric of NAP of the Americas.

What is the Terremark Latin American Gateway?

Terremark's flagship facility, the NAP of the Americas®, is one of the most significant telecommunications projects in the world. The Tier-IV facility was the first purpose-built, carrier-neutral Network Access Point and is the only facility of its kind specifically designed to link Latin America with the rest of the world.

Miami has been ranked as one of the top-five best interconnected cities in the world, ahead of San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Terremark's NAP of the Americas makes Miami the only city in the U.S. where Optical, Ethernet, MPLS, Voice and Internet traffic is handed off in a single location.

Reason #2. It's all about the cloud.

2. Cloud
Verizon instantly has a viable cloud product available in the US and Europe which is built on Vmware’s Vcloud Express platform which Verizon also uses. Both parties are members of the vCloud initiative and thanks to Vmware’s 5% stake in Terremark they effectively get $70 million dollars worth of Vmware’s money too. Last September VZ put their toe in the water with Terremark and begain white labeling their cloud to circumvent their time to market problems they were experiencing building their own cloud product. In addition, Terremark is huge in the federal sector thanks to their NAP of the Capital Region and has existing federal customers on their cloud (a feat few can claim). Interesting to note that last November Terremark was selected to host the FCC’s cloud initiatives. Is this leverage over the FCC for regulatory negotiations?? hmmm

Reason #3. We want the people and their customers. Note this supports why Verizon will let Terremark exist as a subsidiary and keep the Terremark brand.

3. If you cant’ beat ‘em, buy ‘em
Witness Cyrus One’s acquisition by Cinncinnati Bell and HyperTec’s acquisition by Bell Canada. Carriers have realized that they don’t have the right personnel and intellectual capital to build modern, high density carrier neutral facilities. 15 years after deregulation the LECs and Tier1 operators are still saddled with a dated go-to-market strategy whereby they mistakenly believe selling non-carrier neutral sites will guarantee they control customers and gain all of their associated wallet share of network services. Finally they are conceding to the fact that the 2nd generation of carrier neutral operators are running circles around them in terms of 1) acquiring emerging growth and tech centric customers (content, gaming, financials) and 2) keeping them via sticky products like peering and Ethernet exchange platforms. If you can’t beat em’, BUY ‘em! Adjunct to this point – I would argue that Terremark’s Design and Engineering team is one of the best in the market today. They deploy true Tier III sites vs Equinix and others (tier II).

Reason #4. Security and Federal government market. I was just talking to a friend who works for Department of Homeland Security and he has toured the Terremark Culpepper, VA data center which he says is one of the best secure data centers.

4. Security Expertise
Terremark - Verizon has a huge managed security service provider division thanks to their acquisition of Cybertrust in 2007. Terremark brings two key elements to Verizon’s MSSP practice. 1) Vision / Strategy. Terremark is a leader in this area thanks to their acquisition of Data Return and their industry leading personnel like Christopher Day, Chief Security Architect. 2) Terremark has excellent knowledge and experience around deploying and operating secure systems in a cloud environment. This will prove to be a huge leg up on the competition as folks try to tackle the security problems associated with enterprise cloud.

Another analysis published is here, but they don't go into nearly as much depth as Kevin does and they don't make the point that NAP of America as the #1 asset.

DataCenterKnowledge posts on Verizon plans to keep Terremark as a carrier neutral facility.

Verizon: Terremark Will Remain Carrier-Neutral
January 28th, 2011 : Rich Miller
Can a telecom carrier own a carrier-neutral Internet exchange point? Many in the data center industry may be skeptical of the idea. But executives at Verizon insist that its $1.4 billion acquisition of Terremark will not mean any changes for Terremark’s carrier-neutral colocation business.

Peering sites work best in carrier neutral locations.

Terremark an Independent Subsidiary
“We have very specifically set Terremark up as a wholly-owned subsidiary, and Manny and his team will be independent,” said Lowell McAdam, president and chief operating officer of Verizon. “We’re not going to try to cramp their style at all. There will be no moves to take certain customers out of play.”

“Our business model is not changing,” said Terremark CEO Manuel Medina. “Our carrier-neutral colocation business will continue as is.”

How will this play? The carrier hotel industry was born out of unhappiness with incumbent telcos and challenges in deploying equipment in central offices. After the Telecom Act of 1996 opened the U.S. phone market to competitive carriers, incumbent phone companies were directed to provide their new rivals with access to central offices to house equipment and make connections.

fyi, a reason I listen to Kevin is his company's business is advising clients on their network strategy.

Next big carrier hotel to be bought is One Wilshire in LA. Major tenants are.

MAJOR TENANTS:
Core Site
Data center and property management company
Musick, Peeler & Garrett LLP
National law firm
Verizon Communications, Inc.
Broadcast and communications provider

Huh, Verizon is a major tenant. Do I hear a bidding war for One Wilshire? Google, Verizon, who else will join in? Whoever can build a worldwide data center solution first has the advantage.

Netflix's no data center strategy expanding International

January 27, 2011 Dave Ohara

Netflix wrote about its move to AWS and how well things worked.

5 Lessons We’ve Learned Using AWS

In my last post I talked about some of the reasons we chose AWS as our computing platform. We’re about one year into our transition to AWS from our own data centers. We’ve learned a lot so far, and I thought it might be helpful to share with you some of the mistakes we’ve made and some of the lessons we’ve learned.

1. Dorothy, you’re not in Kansas anymore.

If you’re used to designing and deploying applications in your own data centers, you need to be

prepared to unlearn a lot of what you know. Seek to understand and embrace the differences operating in a cloud environment.

...

5. Commit yourself.

When I look back at what the team has accomplished this year in our AWS migration, I’m truly amazed. But it didn’t always feel this good. AWS is only a few years old, and building at a high scale within it is a pioneering enterprise today. There were some dark days as we struggled with the sheer size of the task we’d taken on, and some of the differences between how AWS operates vs. our own data centers.

As you run into the hurdles, have the grit and the conviction to fight through them. Our CEO, Reed Hastings, has not only been fully on board with this migration, he is the person who motivated it! His commitment, the commitment of the technology leaders across the company, helped us push through to success when we could have chosen to retreat instead.

AWS is a tremendous suite of services, getting better all the time, and some big technology companies are running successfully there today. You can too! We hope some of our mistakes and the lessons we’ve learned can help you do it well.

-john ciancutti.

Part of the commitment is international growth. Here is a post for a Netflix International Engineering Director.

Director of Engineering – International Services

ECommerce and Systems Engineering | Los Gatos, CA

Send Jobvite

The opportunity is compelling: to lead the Internationalization of Netflix Services, a fast growing and highly admired company. Fueled by the broad appeal of being able to instantly watch unlimited movies and TV episodes, Netflix subscriber growth has been accelerating for the last several years and is now more than 50% year-over-year. At the same time Netflix is well positioned to expand internationally in 2011. Our upside potential has never been greater—both domestically and internationally. And never has there been a more promising time to join Netflix.

China Telcos executive shuffle across competitors, but is really an internal reshuffle

January 27, 2011 Dave Ohara

Telcos in China are different that the US and understanding them can be difficult. Here is some information for you to consider. Also, keep in mind Telcos are going to be key players in any data center build out in China. The nice thing is they almost all say they want green data centers.

One of the good example of the different is an organizational change in 2004.

While times have changed, the Communist Party of China (CCP) still retains control over key commercial areas. Consider the musical-chairs reappointments of the heads of China's major telecom companies to their competitors in 2004. Investors were stunned, but seen through the eyes of the CCP, this was nothing more than an internal reshuffle.

Another interesting thing about China is the Red Machines for communication.

On the desks of the heads of China's 50-odd biggest state companies, amid the clutter of computers, family photos and other fixtures of the modern CEO's office life, sits a red phone. The executives and their staff who jump to attention when it rings know it as "the red machine," perhaps because to call it a mere phone does not do it justice. "When the 'red machine' rings," a senior executive of a state bank told me, "you had better make sure you answer it."

The red machine is like no ordinary phone. Each one has just a four-digit number. It connects only to similar phones with four-digit numbers within the same encrypted system. They are much coveted nonetheless. For the chairmen and women of the top state companies, who have every modern communications device at their fingertips, the red machine is a sign they have arrived, not just at the top of the company, but in the senior ranks of the Party and the government. The phones are the ultimate status symbol, as they are only given out—under the orders of the Party and government—to people in jobs with the rank of vice minister and above.

The phones are encrypted not just to secure party and government communications from foreign intelligence agencies. They also provide protection against snooping by anyone in China outside the party's governing system. Possession of the red machine means you have qualified for membership of the tight-knit club that runs the country, a small group of about 300 people, mainly men, with responsibility for about one-fifth of humanity.

Here is a wikipedia entry on the China Telecommunications industry.

Telecommunications industry in China

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article discusses the telecommunications industry in mainland China. For Hong Kong and Macau, see Communications in Hong Kong and Communications in Macau.

The telecommunications industry in China is dominated by three state-run businesses: China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile. The three companies were formed by a recent revolution and restructuring launched in May 2008, directed by Ministry of Information Industry (MII), Nationals Development and Reform Commissions (NDRC) and Minister of Finance. Since then, all the three companies gained 3G licenses and engaged fixed-line and mobile business in China.

As a result of China’s entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, a new regulatory regime is now being established and foreign operators are gradually being allowed to access the market. Although Chinese customers keep complaining that they need to pay higher prices for products and services and receive lower-quality services than customers in America orEurope, foreign travellers often feel that telecommunication services in China are cheap and convenient.^{[citation needed]}

Davos WEF, what are we missing?

January 25, 2011 Dave Ohara

I don't know anyone in the data center crowd who makes the list of people who attend the World Economic Forum in Davos. 10 years ago I went with my team for a technical presentation at a computer conference in Davos. It was surrealistic in that a month later the place would have some of the top world power players in one place for WEF. Yet here we were wandering around in the small town of Davos, Switzerland.

What is WEF?

The World Economic Forum encourages businesses, governments and civil society to commit together to improving the state of the world. Our Strategic and Industry Partners are instrumental in helping stakeholders meet key challenges such as building sustained economic growth, mitigating global risks, promoting health for all, improving social welfare and fostering

Sounds really important and prestigious. What does it take to go? Well as the NYTimes reports, one is a lot of money.

A Hefty Price for Entry to Davos
BY ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg NewsThe town of Davos, Switzerland, an expensive place to go.

What’s the price tag to be a Davos Man?

Chief executives, government leaders and academics around the world are headed to Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting this week — a heady power gathering that mixes business, politics and Champagne in the Swiss Alps. It is an event that draws a wide range of decision makers, from Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase to Prime MinisterGeorge A. Papandreou of Greece to U2’s Bono, ostensibly to contemplate how to solve the world’s problems.

How much money?

And if you want to take an entourage, say, five people? Now you’re talking about the “Strategic Partner” level. The price tag: $527,000. (That’s just the annual membership entitling you to as many as five invitations. Each invitation is still $19,000 each, so if five people come, that’s $95,000, making the total $622,000.) This year, all “Strategic Partners” are required to invite at least one woman along as part of an effort to diversify the attendee list.

Why would you go? Networking.

Of course, much of the week is really about one thing: networking. As the “Black Swan” author Nassim N. Taleb described it to Tom Keene of Bloomberg Television, the event is “chasing successful people who want to be seen with other successful people. That’s the game.”

But is this really good networking or a bunch of egos?

DAVID ROTHKOPF

Visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; author of "Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making"

To truly understand the enduring (if fading) appeal of the World Economic Forum, you have to go back to high school. One thing we learn in high school is that human beings, like wolves and fish and most other lower life forms, travel in packs. We also learn that there is a pecking order to those packs. And in every high school there is a group of cool kids who enhance their status simply by hanging out with one another. In my school, we hung out each morning along a certain wall in the front hall. (Yes, I was a cool kid in high school. Of a sort. The nerdy, artsy sort with an Isro.)

And if you think Davos is about anything other than status-seeking-behavior, then you have read too many of the press releases of the overly-earnest Swiss gnomes who put the meeting together. They describe themselves as being "committed to improving the state of the world." They do have a variety of bloviatapaloozas during the course of the event at which the improvement of the globe is debated. But, of course, most of the people there share a common background -- the emerging world, women and poor people are hugely under-represented. So you have to conclude that what they really mean is that they are committed to improving the state of those aspects of the world that are important to CEOs and politicians and the journalists who share the appetizers with them at the receptions in the Belvedere Hotel -- where the real work gets done in the small Alpine village that for a few days each year is the center of the trans-Atlantic establishment.

But watch the people at Davos and you see what's really up. It's not deal-making. That almost never happens there. It's networking, which is the professional way of saying: connecting with the kids who have it going on. The appeal, however, of the entire endeavor is fading for several reasons, all associated with the inadequacy of Davos as a networking forum. First, it's pretty uncool to hop on the corporate jet just to schmooze on a piste. Second, the cool kids of the 21st Century -- such as the Chinese -- are in short-supply (although the organizers are working like crazy to fix that). Finally, the event has grown so big, even the cool kids can't find each other in the mix. As Steve Case, founder of AOL, once told me while standing at the bar in the middle of the hubbub of the main conference center: "You always feel like you are in the wrong place in Davos, like there is some better meeting going on somewhere in one of the hotels that you really ought to be at. Like the real Davos is happening in secret somewhere."

Now doesn't that pretty much capture the way you felt in high school? Or is it just me? (I realize in retrospect that the haircut wasn't such a great idea.)

There are over a 1,000 private jets for the event. A record, and maybe the prestige is fading as things aren't working.

But all this spending may soon be going out of vogue. As one attendee, the author David Rothkopf, recently wrote on his blog, “The entire endeavor is fading for several reasons, all associated with the inadequacy of Davos as a networking forum.”

He explained, “As Steve Case, founder of AOL, once told me while standing at the bar in the middle of the hubbub of the main conference center: ‘You always feel like you are in the wrong place in Davos, like there is some better meeting going on somewhere in one of the hotels that you really ought to be at. Like the real Davos is happening in secret somewhere.’”

Could you imagine the carbon footprint of this event? WEF is a big business. $185 million in annual revenue.

All these embedded costs have helped make the World Economic Forum a big business — perhaps the biggest conference organizer in the world. According to its annual report, it brings in about $185 million in revenue and spends nearly all of it, with almost half of its costs going toward events and the other half on personnel.

Would you go to the WEF Davos event if you were invited? Could you justify the expense report?

As I told one technical friend who was contemplating the logic of buying a Porsche Turbo. You are looking at this all wrong. It is not about the cost benefit analysis - insurance, maintenance. There is a very simple question you need to ask. Does your ego fit the car? Is it too small? Or maybe too big. If your ego comfortably fits in the car you can justify the costs.

WEF works if it fits your ego.