Seeing the Communication Gap between Data Center Teams - Design, Construction, Operations, and IT

Whenever I heard how DCIM will bridge the gap between facilities and IT I look, but question whether there is really something there that can bridge the gap.

How hard is it to bridge the gap?  Consider this video of the Oracle America’s Cup Race team Wing designer and his challenge to talk to the sailors.  WSJ has a good story on this challenge.

Do you think the answer was to install an Oracle Software solution that both would use.  No.  It took many loses to the New Zealand team to finally get the America team to try something the computer hadn’t modeled

There was little time to experiment with the new technique, and Mr. Ozanne's software indicated Oracle would easily outsail New Zealand upwind even without foiling.

Technology was a problem, not the answer.

Nobody had expected this. Had team Oracle placed too much faith in the technology? Had its enormous budget lulled the team into overconfidence? Had Mr. Spithill gotten away from the lessons he had learned in Elvina Bay?

What especially galled him was the New Zealand team's apparent contempt for Oracle's approach. The managing director of the New Zealand team, Mr. Dalton, was openly disdainful of the costly, high-tech catamaran Oracle had chosen. The Kiwi boat had a similar, but more rugged, design. Dean Barker, the opposing skipper, was the son of New Zealand businessman Ray Barker, who had founded the menswear company Barkers.

The results were achieved by challenging technology and its assumptions made by humans.  What makes me laugh is how many times people will make it seem like Technology is something magical.  No it’s not, it was created by people who just like other people make mistakes and incorrect assumptions which gets embedded in the code.

Disney's Data Centers power changes in Prices and How it Services Guests

Disney has a large Data Center in North Carolina along with Facebook, Apple, and Google.  We can all understand what the latter companies do with data centers.  What does Disney do with a big data center?  One thing Disney does is crank out calculations on its guests and park operations.

Businessweek has a couple of articles on this topic.  One is its RFID tracking system.

The answer was on the electronic bands the couple wore on their wrists. That’s the magic of the MyMagic+, Walt Disney’s (DIS) $1 billion experiment in crowd control, data collection, and wearable technology that could change the way people play—and spend—at the Most Magical Place on Earth.

...

MyMagic+ promises far more radical change. It’s a sweeping reservation and ride planning system that allows for bookings months in advance on a website or smartphone app. Bracelets called MagicBands, which link electronically to an encrypted database of visitor information, serve as admission tickets, hotel keys, and credit or debit cards; a tap against a sensor pays for food or trinkets. The bands have radio frequency identification (RFID) chips—which critics derisively call spychips because of their ability to monitor people and things.

Another is Disney’s raising of ticket prices to $100 for a single day pass.

Walt Disney (DIS) is prying parental wallets open a little wider for that vacation visit to the theme park. The Empire of the Mouse is now charging $99 for a one-day park pass at its Magic Kingdom Park near Orlando, an increase of $4 that comes just eight months after the last price hike.

Behind the steadily rising ticket prices is the small world of supply and demand. People keep flooding Disney’s U.S. theme parks, notwithstanding steeper costs. The company reported a 16 percent increase in operating income, to $671 million, for the most recent quarter at its theme park division as sales rose 6 percent, to $3.6 billion. In Disney’s last fiscal year, theme park income rose 17 percent, to $2.2 billion. The company does not disclose attendance data.

What Will MyMagic+ Do for Passholders?

From FastPass+ service to the enhanced planning tools of My Disney Experience, MyMagic+ will make it easier than ever to plan, share and enjoy your next visit.

Improvement in Internet Trust, EU Commission VP Neelie Kroes speaks at Cebit, More Regulation Coming

The data center industry is largely unregulated, but with the maturing of any industry comes the eventual regulation as governments are concerned about public safety.

re/code has a post on EU Commission VP Neelie Kroes.

Neelie Kroes Calls Snowden Revelations a Wake-Up Call — “Let’s Not Snooze Through It”

March 10, 2014, 3:19 AM PDT

By Ina Fried

ETHICS BIO

ARTICLES

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European Commissioner Neelie Kroes said that Edward Snowden’s revelations about NSA spying should serve as a wake-up call that there is a new reality that includes cyber spying and cyber warfare.

Snowden sent the wake up call to the public.  Most of the insiders aren’t surprised by what Snowden has shared.  It just wasn’t public knowledge.

She called on Europe’s political apparatus to create a strong directive around cyber security.

“Snowden gave us a wake up call; let’s not snooze through it,” Kroes said.

Can you see regulations coming?

Joining Kroes in a panel discussion, computer science professor Wendy Hall said that it makes sense that society is struggling to figure out what policies make sense, noting it took centuries to create social norms for the offline world.

“We’ve got to figure out how to live in the digital world in an open society,” Hall said.

If you Have a Disruptive Innovation, do your users Squirm?

Disruptive Innovation is assumed to be a game changer.  

A disruptive innovation is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology. The term is used in business and technology literature to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically first by designing for a different set of consumers in a new market and later by lowering prices in the existing market.

This is contrast to Sustaining Innovation where 

In contrast to disruptive innovation, a sustaining innovation does not create new markets or value networks but rather only evolves existing ones with bettervalue, allowing the firms within to compete against each other's sustaining improvements.

You could put Sustaining Innovation on one end of the scale and put Disruptive Innovation on the other end and your new service fits somewhere on the line.  But, where does it fit?  Here is one way to judge where you fit.  When you discuss your service do you find some people squirm?

1. 1.

   wriggle or twist the body from side to side, esp. as a result of nervousness or discomfort.

Why is squirm an indicator?  Because if you are disrupting things, then some people are going to be uncomfortable with the change.  Seems to be innovative, you are going to make more people squirm.  Sound crazy? I am thinking how to make more people squirm which means the technology we are developing is more disruptive and creating new markets.

Latency impacts Rollout of EA's Titanfall, South Africa orders cancelled

Arstechnica reports on EA’s Titanfall being pulled from the South Africa market due to latency connecting to Microsoft’s Azure Cloud.

EA nixes Titanfall for South Africa after poor network performance

Lack of local Microsoft Azure data centers seems to be feeding latency issues.

"After conducting recent online tests for Titanfall, we found that the performance rates in South Africa were not as high as we need to guarantee a great experience, so we have decided not to releaseTitanfall in South Africa at this time," the post reads. "We understand this is a disappointment for local fans and will keep fans posted on any future plans regarding the release of Titanfall in South Africa."

Australians lucked out even though there is no Azure data center.

Australia is similarly lacking in local Microsoft servers, having to rely on a Microsoft data center in nearby Singapore, but Microsoft has announced plans for two new data centers for New South Wales and Victoria. "We'll have good news soon for Aussies," Zampella tweeted in response to a question about the server situation there.