Another way to Look at Open Compute Project, a Massive Open Online Course

Economist has a post on Higher Education being disrupted by Massive Open Online Courses.  There are only a few of us in the data center industry who think about this if they are facing their kids path in higher education.  What is closer to what we encounter is why go to a data center conference?  The more experienced find there is little to learn at a conference and it is not worth thousands of registration fee and T&E to go to a conference.

Massive open online forces

The rise of online instruction will upend the economics of higher education

Feb 8th 2014 | From the print edition

UNIVERSITIES have not changed much since students first gathered in Oxford and Bologna in the 11th century. Teaching has been constrained by technology. Until recently a student needed to be in a lecture hall to hear the professor or around a table to debate with fellow students. Innovation is eliminating those constraints, however, and bringing sweeping change to higher education.

 

A senior analyst for one of the highly respected IT advisory companies once went to Open Compute Summit and late at night after a few drinks he was talking to Frank Frankovsky and told Frank he should charge to attend the OCP Summits.  He said that his company charges thousands to attend yet there is more useful content from OCP than his company’s events.  I’ve been to both and I would agree I would pay for OCP before his company’s events.

OCP has taken a leadership position to be free to attend and content is free to use.  What other data center event can you go to that has free attendance and free to get to the content, including no registration.This is drawing in users and knowledge from the people who have good things to say yet don’t have the marketing budget to sponsor events or the experience to get their talk in as a presentation.

Any one can find flaws in OCP, and those flaws are exposed to all to see and make comments.  That’s part of being Open.  What data center conference do you attend where you feel like you can freely express your opinion?

OCP’s success is coming at the expense of other data center events that can’t compete against free and open.  With 3,500 registered attendees, 2,400 or more who showed up, and thousands watching the live stream it is a force of change.  Companies who want to reach the OCP audience of scale-out data center infrastructure, hardware, and software continue to support the event.

Media coverage of OCP beats most data center events.  I honestly can’t say what data center event consistently has media coverage better than OCP.

Darn No Data Center Planned for Moffett Field Hangar One, Home for Aerospace and Robotics

I joked that Moffett Field’s Hangar One infrastructure could be an interesting place for Google server racks in a data center.  Turns out the Mercury News has got Google saying they will use Hangar One for Aerospace and Robotics.

Google plans aerospace and robotics projects for Hangar One

By Brandon Bailey

bbailey@mercurynews.com

POSTED:   02/11/2014 05:51:30 PM PST | UPDATED:   94 MIN. AGO

Scaffolding is set up inside the north end of Hangar One at Moffett Field in Mountain View on Wednesday, June 6, 2012. (Kirstina Sangsahachart/Palo Alto Daily News)

 

MOUNTAIN VIEW -- If you were Google, what would you do with a 350,000-square-foot hangar that was originally built to house helium airships for the U.S. Navy?

How about using its cavernous interior for building and testing new robots, planetary rovers and other space or aviation technology?

Maryland Lawmakers push to cut electricity and water to the NSA's data center

USNews reports on Maryland lawmakers proposing a bill to cut electricity and water to the NSA.

The National Security Agency is based in Fort Meade, Md., and is currently building a new computer center there that will be cooled with recycled wastewater from Howard County, Md.

By Steven NelsonFeb. 10, 2014114 Comments SHARE

The National Security Agency’s headquarters in Ft. Meade, Md., will go dark if a cohort of Maryland lawmakers has its way.

Eight Republicans in the 141-member Maryland House of Delegates introduced legislation Thursday that would deny the electronic spy agency “material support, participation or assistance in any form” from the state, its political subdivisions or companies with state contracts.

The bill would deprive NSA facilities water and electricity carried over public utilities, ban the use of NSA-derived evidence in state courts and prevent state universities from partnering with the NSA on research.

If Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and others had been found to support the NSA’s efforts I wonder if the bill would have looked to cut off the electricity and water to their data centers as well.

A lesson from Bitcoin to learn from, Technology is not independent of Politics

Many technology people have problems with the political system.  Just look at the problems that existed for how the politicians thought Obamacare should run, and the technical community’s view of the service.

Technology Review has a guest post by 

Simon Johnson is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and was formerly chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

Who discusses the problem for Bitcoin is the Politics.

Simon Johnson

February 7, 2014

Bitcoin’s Political Problem

If cryptocurrency is to succeed, its proponents need to acknowledge that it’s hard to divorce money from politics.

Money is always political. This is obvious enough when we argue about Federal Reserve policy in the United States, or who should next chair the interest rate-setting body. But for over 1,000 years, we have argued about the nature of our monetary systems and shifted between different ways of making payments. Seen in this historical context, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are just the latest in a long line of challenges to prevailing technology—and to current political arrangements.

The dominant design of today’s monetary systems is based on a western European tradition that can be traced back to the silver denarius of Emperor Charlemagne and before to the organization of the Roman Empire. This design bases the amount and nature of money in the economy on an interaction between government policy and what private individuals want to hold. Continual political pressure and repeated technological opportunity have produced many changes to that basic model over the years. Bitcoin’s rise may result in another round of that process.

Data Centers need to exist within a countries political system.  What happens in China and South America is different than how the USA and EU exist.  And, one of the biggest differences beside geography is the political system that exists in those countries.

What is the Threat to the CIO? Competition baby

I was reading this guest post on Forbes by Gartner research VP Peter Songaard.

Many CIOs Are Unprepared For The Next Era In Enterprise IT

Comment Now

Follow Comments

By Peter Sondergaard

Gartner, Inc.

The next era of enterprise IT is upon us, but many CIOs are not prepared to manage the demands that come in this new era. We refer to this next era as the digitalization of IT, and it’s the beginning of the digital industrial economy.

According to Gartner’s annual CIO Agenda survey, the CIOs responded to say that they often feel overwhelmed by the prospect of building digital leadership while, at the same time, renovating the core of IT infrastructure and capability for the digital future. The survey found that 51 percent of CIOs are concerned that this change is coming faster than they can cope and 42 percent don’t feel that they have the talent needed to face this future.

Now one answer could be go to Gartner to be prepared for the changes.  Or the other way to look at this problem of being unprepared as Enterprise IT has competition. Check out this Dell Video with Safeway’s CIO Barry Libenson and PuppetLab’s Luke Kaines.

IT is Facing Competition for the First Time Ever

Do the CIOs realize that they are now competing for IT services?