Water shortages coming, Wars and Financial impact

MSNBC had an AP article on the coming risk of water shortages causing wars.

US intel: Water a cause for war in coming decades

'Water as a weapon or to further terrorist objectives ... more likely beyond 10 years,' says report released on World Water Day

Image: Israeli soldier stands next to a manmade pool containing water from a spring located near Ramallah
Baz Ratner /  Reuters
An Israeli soldier stands next to a manmade pool containing water from a spring located near the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on March 19. Jewish settlers have seized dozens of natural springs in the occupied West Bank, barring Palestinians or limiting their access to scarce water sources, a United Nations report said this week. In 2009 the spring was taken over by settlers from Halamish, forcing villagers to obtain their irrigation water from other sources, the report and residents said.
By MATTHEW LEE
updated 3/22/2012 2:18:08 PM ET

Drought, floods and a lack of fresh water may cause significant global instability and conflict in the coming decades, as developing countries scramble to meet demand from exploding populations while dealing with the effects of climate change, U.S. intelligence agencies said in a report released on World Water Day.

An assessment reflecting the joint judgment of federal intelligence agencies says the risk of water issues causing wars in the next 10 years is minimal even as they create tensions within and between states and threaten to disrupt national and global food markets. But beyond 2022, it says the use of water as a weapon of war or a tool of terrorism will become more likely, particularly in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

Fidelity Investments has a video on World's Water with 16,845 views in one month.

If you don't think about water issues in your data center design and operations you are not alone, but the people who think about sustainability and green data centers know water will become scarcer and more expensive.

 

James Hamilton's post on Solar Panels at Data Centers gets referenced by Forbes,

Forbes goes into depth reusing James Hamilton's post.

Can Solar Reduce The Impact Of Two High-Profile Data Centers? Amazon Engineer Weighs In [Updated]

The sun sets on the horizon across 42nd street...

Solar arrays may not be able to provide the power density needed by data centers, one expert argues. (Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

Solar power may be not be best way to reduce the environmental impact of sprawling data centers built by companies such as Apple and Facebook, James Hamilton, an Amazon vice president and distinguished engineer argued on his personal blog last Saturday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Don't expect Solar Panels at an Amazon Data Center without tax incentives

James Hamilton writes an analysis of Facebook's and Apple's solar panel deployments.

I love solar power, but in reflecting carefully on a couple of high profile datacenter deployments of solar power, I’m really developing serious reservations that this is the path to reducing data center environmental impact. I just can’t make the math work and find myself wondering if these large solar farms are really somewhere between a bad idea and pure marketing, where the environmental impact is purely optical.

And closes with this.

Looking more deeply at the Solar Array at Apple Maiden, the panels are built by SunPower. Sunpower is reportedly carrying $820m in debt and has received a $1.2B federal government loan guarantee. The panels are built on taxpayer guarantees and installed using tax payer funded tax incentives. It might possibly be a win for the overall economy but, as I work through the numbers, it seems less clear. And, after the spectacular failure of solar cell producer Solyndra which failed in bankruptcy with a $535 million dollar federal loan guarantee, it’s obvious there are large costs being carried by tax payers in these deployments. Generally, as much as I like data centers, I’m not convinced that tax payers should by paying to power them.

As I work through the numbers from two of the most widely reported upon datacenter solar array deployments, they just don’t seem to balance out positively without tax incentives. I’m not convinced that having the tax base fund datacenter deployments is a scalable solution. And, even if it could be shown that this will eventually become tax neutral, I’m not convinced we want to see datacenter deployments consuming 100s of acres of land on power generation. And, when trees are taken down to allow the solar deployment, it’s even harder to feel good about it.  From what I have seen so far, this is not heading in the right direction. If we had $x dollars to invest in lowering datacenter environmental impact and the marketing department was not involved in the decision, I’m not convinced the right next step will be solar.

Given this information, I wouldn't hold my breath for a solar panel at Amazon for a few reasons.

  1. The economics don't make sense for Amazon
  2. Amazon would not want the visibility for its data centers.  (Is Amazon the next Greenpeace target?)
  3. Taxes is what drives many Amazon decisions, and they look long term at tax incentives.
  4. There are probably a bunch more, but bottom line the numbers don't support solar panels

Amazon acquires automated material handling vendor Kiva Systems

Amazon has a press release on the acquisition of Kiva Systems.

Amazon.com to Acquire Kiva Systems, Inc.

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar. 19, 2012-- Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquireKiva Systems, Inc., a leading innovator of material handling technology.

“Amazon has long used automation in its fulfillment centers, and Kiva’s technology is another way to improve productivity by bringing the products directly to employees to pick, pack and stow,” said Dave Clark, vice president, global customer fulfillment, Amazon.com. “Kiva shares our passion for invention, and we look forward to supporting their continued growth.”

“For the past ten years, the Kiva team has been focused on creating innovative material handling technologies,” said Mick Mountz, CEO and founder of Kiva Systems. “I’m delighted that Amazon is supporting our growth so that we can provide even more valuable solutions in the coming years.”

Most of you have probably never heard of Kiva Systems.  I have.  Why?  Because, I used to be a distribution logistics geek.  I studied the subject in college. Worked in Distribution Logistics and packaging engineering at HP.  Apple actually hired me for my distribution logistics expertise away from HP and I worked on Apple's distribution system for years before moving to hardware product development and software product development.

One of the things that distribution logistics teaches you is supply chain management principles.  When I worked on hardware development the connection is obvious. Working on software, I would think of bits and information as a supply chain issue as the bits move.  The data center is a factory to support the movement of bits in a supply chain.  It is interesting when you start to think of things as abstractions that are simply bits of information.

So, who is Kiva Systems and why are they so interesting.  Kiva moves material to the person on robotic carts.  The software is quite intelligent to keep the fast moving items closest to the material handlers, and move the slow moving items further away.  This is no different than storage and caching issues in an operating system.

Read more about Kiva implementations in these markets.

The WSJ does a pretty good job of giving background on Kiva Systems

Robots on the March

How Kiva's robots run a warehouse

  • To complete an order, Kiva's squat orange robots fetch tall movable shelves, or pods, that have the items needed, bringing them to the human "picker."
  • A laser pointer tells the human which item needs to be picked from each shelf. The worker, who stays in one place, scans a bar code to confirm it is the right item. It's placed in the order box, which sits on another one of the mobile pods.
  • New pods arrive steadily with additional items as needed. Items are grouped together to fulfill the orders.
  • Pods filled with completed orders are taken by the robots to the shipping door, where a human tapes them closed in preparation for final transport.

But, here is an easier way to understand what Kiva System is.

Here is a TED talk by the founder.

 

Here is a IEEE Spectrum video on YouTube.

 

This will make for fun conversations with some of friends who work on logistics.

Amazon.com most likely figured out how much more efficient it is to move material with robots.  The old way of thinking about robots is like this video.

 

Hunt for Data Center Talent, if you think it is a popularity contest you'll be surprised

Last year, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel with Jack Glass, Joe Kava, and Mike Manos on the Hunt for Data center talent.

Hunt for Data Center Talent panel at 7x24 Exchange - Jack Glass, Joe Kava, Mike Manos

The folks at 7x24 Exchange gave us the opportunity to discuss a topic that does not focus on the technology.  So, if we don't discuss data center technology, what should we discuss? Our idea was to discuss the #1 issue that defines the operations and design of a data center, the people on the data center team.

We had an awesome panel with a good perspective on what talent is needed in the data center.

Jack Glass, P.E.
Director - Data Center Planning
Citi Technology Infrastructure

Mike Manos
Senior Vice President, Technical Operations
AOL

Joe Kava
Senior Director, Data Centers
Google

NewImage

Now that I pay more attention to the topic of data center talent it is amazing how many times people make the wrong decisions on who to hire.  Well wrong in the opinion of people who work on data centers.  Someone at a senior executive level who usually knows little about data centers picks based on his personal preference.  But, what do senior company executives know about data center executives.  The NYTimes writes on "The Secrets of Talent Scouts" and makes an excellent closing remark.

For all of Sequoia’s success, Mr. Moritz cautions: “We often get it wrong. Judging people is more difficult than judging a market or a product. Markets rarely deliver big surprises. People will always produce surprises.”

When someone is on the speaker tour they are either selling their services, adding public speaking engagements as their internal achievements, looking for a new job.  Or a 4th option is sharing knowledge because it is the right thing to do.

Hint: the data center talent is more often the 4th option, and not the necessarily the most popular.  As we have all learned being the nerdy kids in the school, the most popular are not necessarily the most talented.