Spend 10% of the budget to solve a Real-Time Traffic Monitoring

Monitoring in the data center can be expensive especially if you use proprietary technologies.  Jalopnik has a post on a Bluetooth MAC address approach to use mobile devices in cars vs. a much more expensive automotive solution.

TRAFFIC

BY MATT HARDIGREE AUG 15, 2011 2:00 PM

12,737 80

Share

How Houston uses your Bluetooth phone to fight traffic

...

Anonymous Wireless Address Matching (AWAM) takes the individual MAC address on Bluetooth-enabled systems like phones, hands-free devices, computers, and even Sony PSP Go gaming devices and tracks them as they enter a roadway equipped with a sensor.

If you've got your iPhone in your pocket and you drive along Interstate 45 leaving downtown Houston the system records a version of your MAC address.

When you cross another sensor it records you again, recognizing you as the same vehicle. It then takes your speed between the two points and averages it with everyone else passing through the same two points.

This new approach provides Houston with a cheaper, more accurate, and more detailed traffic view than other car monitoring systems such as Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI) technology, which the region also uses to monitor traffic.

"[AWAM is] dirt cheap!" said David Fink, with the Texas Department of Transportation Houston District. "If our current multi-lane AVI sensors cost $75,000 on the cheap end to install, the most expensive version of the AWAM with solar power and Wi-Fi costs $8,000."

Here is a PDF of the system.

Michael Dell has fun commenting on HP's decision to abandon PC business

HP's decision to get out of the PC business has Wall Street voting with a 20% reduction in stock value.

Which leaves an opening for Michael Dell to make some comments on Twitter.

MichaelDell Michael Dell

Goodbye HP, Sorry you don't want to be in PCs anymore..But we do more than ever. How would you say goodbye to HP?

2 hours ago Favorite Retweet Reply

MichaelDell Michael Dell

HP.... They are calling it a separation but it feels like a divorce

18 Aug

MichaelDell Michael Dell

If HP spins off their PC business....maybe they will call it Compaq?

18 Aug

Software in Data Centers is Eating the World

Mark Andreesen of Netscape fame has an essay in the WSJ.

Why Software Is Eating The World

By MARC ANDREESSEN

This week, Hewlett-Packard (where I am on the board) announced that it is exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily in software, where it sees better potential for growth. Meanwhile, Google plans to buy up the cellphone handset maker Motorola Mobility. Both moves surprised the tech world. But both moves are also in line with a trend I've observed, one that makes me optimistic about the future growth of the American and world economies, despite the recent turmoil in the stock market.

In short, software is eating the world.

Mark argues that software is dominating industries

The best new movie production company in many decades, Pixar, was a software company. Disney—Disney!—had to buy Pixar, a software company, to remain relevant in animated movies.

...

Photography, of course, was eaten by software long ago. It's virtually impossible to buy a mobile phone that doesn't include a software-powered camera, and photos are uploaded automatically to the Internet for permanent archiving and global sharing. Companies like Shutterfly, Snapfish and Flickr have stepped into Kodak's place.

Today's largest direct marketing platform is a software company—Google. Now it's been joined by Groupon, Living Social, Foursquare and others, which are using software to eat the retail marketing industry. Groupon generated over $700 million in revenue in 2010, after being in business for only two years.

Today's fastest growing telecom company is Skype, a software company that was just bought by Microsoft for $8.5 billion. CenturyLink, the third largest telecom company in the U.S., with a $20 billion market cap, had 15 million access lines at the end of June 30—declining at an annual rate of about 7%. Excluding the revenue from its Qwest acquisition, CenturyLink's revenue from these legacy services declined by more than 11%. Meanwhile, the two biggest telecom companies, AT&T and Verizon, have survived by transforming themselves into software companies, partnering with Apple and other smartphone makers.

All of this software goes into data centers, and to grow faster they need to be greener data centers using less energy and reducing the environmental impact.

Apple T-Shirt that fits the Do Not Talk Fight Club data center rule

Data Centers in general obey the infamous Fight Club Rule “You Don Not Talk About Fight Club.”  “You Do Not Talk About Data Centers”

Apple has created version of this rule in a T-Shirt.

Apple Souvenir T-Shirt Jokes About Company’s Secrecy

Monday July 11, 2011 2:03 pm PDT by Jordan Golson

This $17 t-shirt sums up most visits to Apple’s corporate headquarters in Cupertino. Available only at Apple’s Company Store, it’s a bit more classy than “I visited Apple HQ and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” — but sends the same message. The shirt reads:

I visited the Apple campus. But that’s all I’m allowed to say.

This is too funny and I had to get one.  Which is being modeled by not daughter asking, “Dad, why is this funny?”

The SLA number game, no one cares when their service is down

The guys at 259 Consulting Group have an interesting post on meeting a customer’s SLA from his perspective running SaaS.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The 259 Consulting Group audits, analyzes, and improves your SaaS Infrastructure. We’ll find your next SaaS problem before it finds you. Visit our contact page if you'd like to get in touch.

…

Met your SLA? Nobody cares.

Posted by: 259 Consulting Group

A Wise Man once told me that the best I could hope for in the SaaS Infrastructure business is to not have [angry] customers.  Customers may agree to a 99.9% SLA but they’re actually upset anytime my service is unavailable.

As the Wise Man put it: “Customers only remember your last outage. Don’t expect roses and a congratulations card when you barely meet your monthly SLA.”

The author uses a “Wise Man’s advice” story to tell his story of enlightenment.

I received the Wise Man’s advice on the heels of a horrible outage for one of my new services. He was right. Forget the 100% uptime over the last six months, the only thing that mattered to my angry customers was the loss of three nines in the current month.

The Wise Man continued with his advice: “If you want to be in the service business, you need to get disciplined about mitigating service interruption.”

That was the day I really got Service Management Religion.

Service Management is a set of activities that ensures your service is available as promised. It’s not a glamorous set of activities but, after that worst outage of my career, I still can’t think of anything more important than ensuring data is never lost and my services are always available.

We define Service Management as the daily management of the following processes:

• Capacity and Demand Management
• SLA Management
• Risk Management
• Knowledge Management
• Compliance Management
• Vendor and Hardware Management
• Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity