Do you have a monk in your data center? Trappist Monks secrets to business success

I have been accused of living like a monk.  I used to live in my house without a TV, no stereo, with only one chair and glass table on the floor.  My current house is not like a monastery.  I still prefer silence instead of the stereo.  When I was 14 I started meditating.  And have been accused of having discussions with me is like arguing with a zen monk. :-)

On my trip to Iceland I finished the 

Business Secrets of the Trappist Monks: One CEO's Quest for Meaning and Authenticity

August Turak

There are many lessons in the book worth remembering.

The main theme is.

Service and selflessness are at the heart of the 1,500-year-old monastic tradition’s remarkable business success. It is an ancient though immensely relevant economic model that preserves what is positive and productive about capitalism while transcending its ethical limitations and internal contradictions. 

See how Journalism works, where the money comes from influences the content

One of the things I've had an interesting time trying to understand how the media works.  I use to work on print publishing technologies at Apple and Microsoft, and print is a continuous slide.  Going from print to online has been a painful transition for many.  

Matthew Ingram on PaidContent has a post that points out the difficulty of online journalism is can't survive without a wealthy benefactor or cat GIFS (random entertainment).  The meat of his point is here.

News has always been subsidized somehow

In the good old days, the journalism business was subsidized by all of the other things a newspaper containedapart from the news. This included classified ads, obviously, but also horoscopes, gardening columns, the comic page and other add-ons that had little or nothing to do with news or journalism. Gradually the internet has taken most of these pillars away, and left newspapers with just the hard news — in other words, the only thing no one wants to pay for.

Matthew points out Jeff Bezos acquisition of the Washington Post and other trade pubs.

Until it was acquired by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the Washington Post was subsidized not just by the Graham family, but also by the Kaplan education business (until it began to fail as well). In Canada, the largest national paper — theGlobe and Mail — is owned by the Thomson family of Thomson Reuters fame, while the Toronto Star has been subsidized by both a family trust and the Harlequin romance business. The parent company of the Guardian in Britain subsidizes its journalism through a family trust but also through the ownership of the Auto Trader group of companies.

No different than understanding the background and history of a writer it is useful to understand what is subsidizing the news you are reading, because news in itself is not profitable.

Challenges of Doing Business in China, I wouldn't without Power and Money

I've had plenty of discussions on the subject of data center businesses going into China.  Scott Noteboom is the latest to make the announcement he'll go into emerging markets including China.  DCK covers the latest and Scott's statement he has the secret sauce to do business in China.

Noteboom believes he’s put together the connections and resources to make China more accessible. ”We believe that we will be the first provider to enable non-Chinese companies to smoothly deploy in China,” said Noteboom, who said he hopes to bring new data center technologies into China to realize exceptional efficiency and economics.

Noteboom isn;t supplying many details just yet. A key aspect of the plan will be site selection. Noteboom says LitBit hopes to identify the Asian equivalents of Quincy, Washington – previously unknown sites that provide exceptional economics and efficiency for data center operators.

My perspective on China is based on when I worked for Apple and Microsoft and would acquire power supplies and Simplified Chinese fonts. There are many meetings, negotiations and ongoing contract maintenance.  I've also known many people who have worked in China localizing Microsoft software or developing software in China.

Whenever someone in the data center industry says join me in working in China I say no thank you.

Here is a post that does a good job of explaining the challenges of doing business in China.  Five points are made.  #3 is the one that most don't know how to address.

Number three is kind of similar to number two. In China, there is always a story behind the story. There’s a person behind the person. It’s never what you see on the front end. It is partially related to cultural issues. For 5,000 years there has been this inside outside orientation to much of Chinese culture and as an outsider you are shown a certain view and as an insider you are shown a certain view. And there are various levels of being an insider or outsider. Again when you are trying to do business with a company or a person, you should find out where this person is from, where this company is from. What is their history? How did they become who they are today?  How did they get their money?  Who is behind them?  There is always someone sitting behind them, and not in a nefarious way. You are not talking to some puppet or shadow. There is just a level of complexity to Chinese business and to Chinese society that is important to take into account. We advise companies to never stop asking questions.

It will be interesting how LitBit does in China.  I helped out one friend who needed a resource that can address the above issue.  There aren't many.  You need a strategy and full time commitment to win in China, and even then you may lose.

Many people think China is new, but it is a country where Power and Money is in its DNA which by the way is not that much different than other countries.  It is just China has been at it for 5,000 years and it can be different than a Western approach.

Data Center Drama Class, making the point

I was in a tour of Verne Global's data center, and in the tour we couldn't take pictures of too many things, but I got this one of Tate Cantrell and it was memorable of Tate making a point on the infrastructure.

I never really thought about it, but using your arms to make points is something we should all try a bit more.  I don't think many of us took drama class in high school. :-)

I'll pay more attention to when people are using their arms and body.  It makes the pictures much more interesting.

Another picture I took from the media/analyst briefing event was this one of the Viking Ship.

Here is RMS's Bobby Soni.

And I am even caught making gestures with my arms.

A Little Bit more data on LitBit's claim of being the biggest most innovative serving the big brands

LitBit's Scott Noteboom made a grand claim.

led development and/or operations of many of the world's largest and most innovative data centers, which have served companies including: Apple, Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft.

Here are some other data points to evaluate the statement and to get you thinking.

On Microsoft, Mike Manos tweeted this statement.  

Mike Manos@mjmanos

@greenm3 WRT- bit.ly/1eNdk4y Hmm-In all my time running that program thru today - this person never worked on anything for Microsoft

DCD references how DLB Associates was the external resource working on Google's data centers.

Today, both the best and worst kept secret in the data center industry is that DLB Associates was lead design engineer on Google’s initial data center campus build out (a well-guarded secret for the first seven years of Google’s build program). While Google provided the conceptual design and placed a high priority on efficiency, DLB designed the campus and buildings as well as the majority of the MEP infrastructure.

In the data center industry you can make all kinds of claims.  The diligent will reference check.  I wonder who at Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google LitBit points you to when you want to get the details on how they had been served.