If Facebook buys CA's DCIM solution should you?

Facebook’s Tom Furlong announced that Facebook is using CA’s DCIM solution.

CA Technologies Works with Facebook to Help Drive Efficiencies and Reliability in Its Global Data Centers

CA Innovation Helps Provide Power Improvements in One of the Most Demanding IT Environments in the World

SAN JOSE, CA, January 28, 2014 – CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) announced today that Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) is using CA DCIM (CA Data Center Infrastructure Management) software to bring together millions of energy-related data points from physical and IT resources in its global data centers to improve power efficiency.

Facebook conducted an intensive DCIM vendor review process. CA was one of a dozen considered and completed a proof-of-concept, followed by a more extensive pilot in a 100,000-square-foot data center. Upon completion of the pilot, Facebook worked with CA to create a custom solution to deliver on the energy-related DCIM requirements today and in the future, in terms of technology innovation and CA’s ability to execute with speed and scalability, as well as working together to adjust and fine-tune associated business objectives.

“We are on a mission to help connect the world, and our IT infrastructure is core to our success,” said Tom Furlong, VP, Infrastructure Data Centers, Facebook. “We are continually looking at ways to optimize our data centers and bringing all of our energy-related information together in one spot was a core requirement.

Facebook is in top 10 of data center footprints out there, and with it comes a big budget and high visibility for those who are its suppliers.  This means there is a good chance Facebook is going to get high value from its use of CA DCIM.  

One question to ask is whether you will benefit from Facebook’s use of DCIM?  Do you run your operations similar to Facebook?  The answer is almost universally NO.  So what is the benefit of Facebook using CA DCIM to you?  Does it prove CA DCIM can scale and perform?  Maybe, do you know the hardware required to run CA DCIM?  No.  Will you?  Most likely not. 

The list of companies who can provide a DCIM solution that scales to Facebook’s need is short.  

What would be interesting to know is what other DCIM companies Facebook thought it would use and how they compared to CA DCIM.

Living in the Silicon Valley is tough, even if you have a lot of money

I just spent 4 days in the bay area and ready to head home to Seattle, specifically in Redmond.  22 Years ago I left my home is Los Gatos, working in Cupertino for Apple to move to Redmond to work for Microsoft.  I didn’t know anyone in Seattle or Microsoft in 1992, and figured I would give it a try worse case I move.  There are three reasons why I moved - real estate prices, traffic and state income tax.  None of that has really changed.

I do come down to the bay area often though as there many companies I chat with, conferences to attend, and to see family and friends.

Chatting with one of my friends who makes the commute from Seattle to the bay area for work last night got me thinking to write this post.  One observation is the number of people who commute in to their job an hour or more reminded us of the commutes for NYC.  Yet, working in silicon valley doesn’t carry the cachet that NYC does, and being in downtown NYC has many more benefits than being in downtown Mountain View.

I have friends who have lived in the bay area and just rent due to the crazy house prices and their long term plans are to move somewhere else.

Many of the people who commute to silicon valley have chosen to live somewhere else they want to be longer term.  Many people who were lucky enough to buy real estate long ago can live closer to work, but the recent hires have a much more difficult time when buyers are paying cash for homes costing over $2 mil.

All of this has an affect on the talent Silicon Valley can attract.  At some point there will be a transition to ????

The ARM Server momentum continues

Calxeda’s end is not the end of the ARM Server.  Yesterday at OCP there was a bunch of ARM news and ZDNet’s Larry Dignan posts.

ARM server army revs up at Open Compute Project powwow

Summary: ARM-based servers haven't taken over the data center yet, but the runway is getting crowded. Can ARM-based servers really get 25 percent of the data center market by 2019 as AMD hopes?

AMD announced their ARM processor.

Mark Zuckerberg video with Tim O'Reilly at Open Compute V

Here is the video on Youtube with Mark Zuckerberg and Tim O’Reilly.

The talk starts out with the first summit in Palo Alto.  Frank and I were chatting and we laughed about how Mark pointed out the challenge to host the first event.

The web traffic so far is only 329.  I am interested in how many others watch this video.  It is nice to see a Founder care about the environment and data centers.

5 good reasons why I don't have clients in DC

I am a West Coast guy, and try to keep my client base on the west coast.  I don’t think I have ever visited a DC agency for business other than the President’s Photography department to research the use of RAW images and other features for photography in Windows 15 years ago.

I know the Federal Government is a different world, and when I read Stacey Higginbotham’s post on visiting a DC conference it clarified the differences.

 

5 ways Washington DC is very different than Silicon Valley

by 

 

14 HOURS AGO

2 Comments

Man smartphone paper DC tech conference
photo: Stacey Higginbotham/Gigaom
SUMMARY:

Silicon Valley and Washington D.C. are on opposite coasts and often seem like opposite worlds, but learning how they differ might help bridge some very real gaps in how tech policy is talked about and implemented.

Paper is the note taking medium, not a computer.

The tool of choice is paper, not a computer. I can scan the rows of people at our Structure conference and see the lids of many a MacBook or the glow of tablets, but here, while there were some folks typing in their notes, more were jotting things down on paper. And in conversations with people, only one ever pulled out a phone; and that was because someone was calling her. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler even told me after an onstage interview that people are more productive wearing a watch than using their phones to check the time because the phones then distract them. People clearly have smart phones, but they aren’t using them like they are a tether to a more interesting world.

The one thing I don’t think I could get used to is the fact that people sit in the presentations as a higher priority than networking.

When you attend a conference in DC, you actually attend the conference. The sessions were packed and the screening room was overflowing with people watching the proceedings. There are few people wandering the halls doing deals or networking outside of the breaks.

 

The rest of the post remind of the other 3 things that explain how different it is to do business in DC.