Fjord CEO provides 4 takeaways @MobilizeConf

Jay Fry wrote this tweet at

RT @elieljohnson: @olof_s the user is the OS, privacy is a currency, digital --> physical, mashup economy needs orchestrators #MobilizeConf

Here is the talk

CAN INVISIBLE ALSO BE AMAZING? DESIGNING FLUID AND CONNECTED EXPERIENCES

Can we fall in love with things we can't see? As the bond between mobility and the cloud increases, we will need to design invisible and seductive service experiences. Device-to-cloud interactions will yield new products that will adapt to device capabilities and context. But as bright and attractive as the future might look, we have to consider the ethics of money-making in this new age. Who will own user data, and is pushing advertising going to ruin user experience? This and more is covered by leading design firm, Fjord.

Speakers:Olof Schybergson - CEO, Fjord

And the slide with the 4 takeaways.

Dell Channel Growth 33% to 50%, huge opportunity for Data Center Solutions

CRN has an article that discusses The Michael Dell difference.

The Michael Dell Difference

By Steven Burke, CRNSeptember 23, 2011

No CEO has been more engaged and fired up recently about making gains with the channel than Dell Founder, Chairman and CEO Michael Dell.

Dell, an industry icon who pioneered the direct sales model for the PC business, has remade himself and his company over the last four years into a charged-up, channel-centric partner. In the process, Dell himself has become his company’s No. 1 channel advocate.

What caught my eye is the focus on the channel and data center solutions.

Dell’s channel conversion didn’t happen overnight. Michael Dell and Greg Davis, the company’s global channel chief, have been building the channel effort one partner at a time, and Dell himself has played an active role in that channel sales effort, reaching out to partners directly and helping them close deals. The Dell channel business now amounts to about 33 percent of the company’s $62 billion in annual sales. And Dell sees it growing to 50 percent.

The fact is Dell has grown its channel business by being a consistent and predictable partner with a channel-neutral sales compensation model aimed at incenting its direct sales force to work hand in hand with partners. That’s not to say that there are still not issues with channel conflict. Many partners want to see more joint sales engagement between Dell direct and partners. And if Dell starts opening enterprise customer doors with data center solutions partners, it could prove to be a huge windfall for the company.

Michael Dell gets it that in order to scale he needs partners.  A direct sales force has difficulty scaling.

Partners that decide to take on Dell as a partner can be sure that they will find in Dell himself a passionate, channel-savvy leader that gets their business and the power of delivering solutions -- hardware, software and services -- to customers, and is willing to get his hands dirty helping them in the sales trenches. Michael Dell gets the channel. And he gets IT. That’s a lot more than can be said of many CEOs in this business.

It is amazing to think that Michael Dell started with a direct sales model, and now he is focusing on growing his channel.

Microsoft Deploys Samsung's Green RAM in Technology Center, demonstrating Performance and Energy Efficient Private Clouds

Back when Mike Manos worked at Microsoft the both of us went to a Microsoft Technology Conference in Barcelona and met Frank Koch, one of the early believers in Green Data Centers.  It's been four years since Frank made the early efforts, and I just saw this press release between Microsoft and Samsung.

Microsoft and Samsung Collaborate to Enable Optimized Performance and Power Efficiency for Server Systems

...

Frank Koch, infrastructure architect and Green IT lead of Microsoft Germany summarizes the joint efforts: "The world notices a dramatic increase of energy usage in data centers with more and more people leveraging their IT and moving to a private cloud. With the innovative memory modules from Samsung, we do not only measure higher throughput and performance for our hyper-v cloud solutions but a lower power consumption of the involved server systems, too. This is a great win-win situation for everyone."

The specific power savings was 15% for a 30 watt per system decrease.

Samsung's 30nm-class Green DDR3 was tested in eight gigabyte registered dual inline memory modules, installed on server systems running virtualized environments with the Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system. They delivered power conservation levels of up to 15 percent for a 30-watt per system decrease, compared to systems using 50nm-class DDR3.

This gives a good reason to reach out to Frank and get more specifics on the energy efficiency projects he is working on.

Microsoft expands Data Center Capacity in Dublin and Virginia

Data Center locations are kept secret by many, but what is harm of the public knowing where a company has its data centers?  You can create many scenarios where you can worry about worst case scenarios.  But, one good side of sharing where your data center sites are located is it mproves your relationship with the local community.  When Google first built the Dalles data center, multiple people including the local officials were held to confidentiality agreements.  Contrast that with Google openly discussing its latest data center in Hamina with sea water cooling.

Microsoft's Dublin data center was disclosed by gov't officials.

According to an Irish business news report, Microsoft is planning to spend millions of euros expanding its two-year-old US$500m data center in Dublin by more than a third.

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At the opening of the data center, then Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen said he believed that in the future companies would rely on cloud-based delivery models, emphasizing the importance of large scale investments in infrastructure services such as those seen by Microsoft in Ireland.

Microsoft's Virginia Data center expansion had local officials disclosing details.

Microsoft plans $150 million expansion in Mecklenburg

September 23, 2011 1:29 PM

Microsoft Corp. plans to expand its data center in Mecklenburg County, creating 10 new jobs.

The company’s $499 million investment last year created 50 jobs and represented the largest economic investment in Southern Virginia. The expansion will increase the data center’s cloud infrastructure and services capacities.

Microsoft will spend $150 million to build a new facility at its site.

“Securing this state-of-the-art data center was an important win for the commonwealth, and additional growth will further establish Virginia as an Information Technology leader,” Gov. Bob McDonnell said in a statement.

With Google and Microsoft relaxing its data center location disclosures of site location, the benefits of disclosure look like they are winning vs. secrecy.  Facebook's Open Compute Project is another example of openness and disclosure.

One Way to Build Real-Time Energy Controls for the Data Center, Inventory all your assets with an IP address

DCIM is a hot topic and a lot of what people are trying to do is get control over their data center assets.  One of my data center friends heard that the current count is up to 59 companies provide some form of DCIM solution.

The people who have been the early adopters of DCIM have learned that no one tool does it all, and they need to put together multiple products to solve their DCIM problem.  What is lacking is an architecture for the DCIM that meets the needs of their enterprise.

What is an architecture?  Merriam-Webster definition.  #1-4 is what most people think about.  I am referring to #5 for computer systems.

Definition of ARCHITECTURE

1

: the art or science of building; specifically : the art or practice of designing and building structures and especially habitable ones

2

a : formation or construction resulting from or as if from a conscious act <the architecture of the garden>b : a unifying or coherent form or structure <the novel lacks architecture>

3

: architectural product or work

4

: a method or style of building

5

: the manner in which the components of a computer or computer system are organized and integrated

Great architecture solves problems

So what problem are you trying to solve?

The problem is most don't even know what problems they have that need to be solved.  For example, what knobs and dials exist in the data center to control the energy consumption in the data center?  Who gets to turn the knobs and dials?

If you think you want to control the energy consumption of your IT assets you need to know all your assets and be able to talk to them, to control them.  One approach is JouleX's latest product.

Other highlights of JEM’s expanded capabilities include:

• New device control features allowing for integrated power capping, central processing unit (CPU) performance leveling (for Windows, VMware, Linux), and support for VMware vCenter, and Distributed Power Management (DPM).

• More granular control using power, temperature and utilization metrics to migrate virtual machines and optimize server performance and energy consumption using VMware vMotion.

• Detailed analytics and reporting for sustainable procurement (analysis of device models for energy efficiency, for device replacement planning, and for measuring energy and carbon savings from virtualization projects)

• Virtualization and utilization reporting to identify under- and over-utilized devices. This identifies candidates for upgrading, retiring, and virtualizing.

• Additional device support for rack and floor power distribution units (PDUs) as well as computer room air conditioning (CRAC) and uninterruptable power supply (UPSs).
• 

JouleX CEO Tom Noonan explains the latest version.

“We continue to accelerate our technology development in terms of creating actionable energy intelligence for our customers to make quicker decisions, optimize their existing infrastructure, and reduce their operating expenses,” said Tom Noonan, president and CEO at JouleX.

But, I think of it as Real-time Energy Control system.  Your energy thermostat for the data center.

One approach is JouleX and there are many others.  The hardest question that almost no one asks is what is the architecture of your DCIM solution?  What problems are you trying to solve?

We have a long ways to go in DCIM.