Open Compute 2015 Registration is Open

I've registered for Open Compute 2015.  You can at this link https://www.eventbrite.com/e/open-compute-us-summit-2015-march-10-11-details-below-registration-12528804993

ocp us summit 2015
Registration Now Open!
We are pleased to announce the dates for the next OCP U.S. Summit on Tuesday, March 10 and Wednesday, March 11, 2015 at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, CA.

The upcoming Summit offers you the chance to showcase your products and services, generate quality leads, meet with business partners, and network with OCP customers, contributors, and executives.

At the most recent summit, attendees came from the technology sector in addition to finance, government, and consulting. These attendees represented executive-level roles of vice president or higher as well as IT directors and managers.

Here is a video of last January's event!

Here are the videos from the OCP EU Summit from October 2014.

Thinking Differently about Data Centers

Apple is famous for the "Think Different" ad.

Featuring: Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Branson, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Buckminster Fuller, Thomas Edison, Muhammad Ali, Ted Turner, Maria Callas, Mahatma Gandhi, Amelia Earhart & Bernt Balchen, Alfred Hitchcock, Martha Graham, Jim Henson, Frank Lloyd Wright, Pablo Picasso.

And here is a video of Steve Jobs explaining the ideas of "Think Different"

1997. Steve Jobs in shorts, relaxed, during internal meeting with Apple executives and managers, just a few weeks after his return to Apple, speaks briefly about planned changes in company (pipeline, products, distribution changes) and then presents first informations about planned "Think Different" campaign, now legendary and iconic...

It has been said that Think Different, should have been said "Think Differently" for correct grammar.

I have been spending a lot of time thinking differently about data centers.  What are changes that are needed to promote innovation.  Thanks to clients who have pushed for tough problems to be solved I've been able to start to see a different way. 

Part of thinking differently is to think what aligns with a company's business model.  The flaw in so much is to take a commodity approach and apply it to take any situation.  Think of how many presentations you have seen that are selling you commodity approaches that apply to anyone.

What is innovative is figuring out how to solve problems that work for a company to give it an advantage over others.

Peaking behind the Scenes of Failed The Data Centers LLC

Sometimes you can learn from mistakes. If you are an engineer, so much of what you know works is from the things that didn't.  Delawarenonline reports on the suit filed between executives at The Data Centers LLC.

“Five months after the hotly debated development was shelved, the former president of The Data Centers LLC in West Chester, Pa., is lashing out against the company’s chief executive, Earl Eugene “Gene” Kern, saying Kern froze him out of business affairs then ran up millions of dollars in debt the company had no ability to pay.

Robert Krizman, a well-known technical expert, alleges Kern wooed him away from an executive job at a major company with promises Krizman would be president of a company developing the data storage and management center, according to court papers. The two became members in the limited liability company with Kern having a larger ownership interest, the complaint says.”
— http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2014/12/31/suit-offers-glimpse-behind-doomed-data-center-venture/21135533/

Some of the vendors have unpaid invoices.

“Two companies have filed lawsuits for unpaid invoices totaling $1.3 million, plus interest, costs and attorneys’ fees. Duffield Associates engineering firm has sued the company for $619,000 debt, while Constructure Management Inc. construction management firm has sued for more than $772,000 in unpaid invoices, according to legal documents.”


Analyst MKM ups rating to Buy for Intel based on Data Center Surge

Data Centers are part of regular news.  Today ran across this on Barron's blog on Intel being up a Buy from Hold by MKM.

“MKM Partners‘s Ian Ing today raises his rating on Intel (INTC) stock to Buy from Neutral, and raises his price target to $45 from $40, as part of a broad overview of end-market conditions for semiconductors in 2015, with one of the main themes being the explosion in data traffic that requires more server processing.

“We likely kept our neutral rating (with positive bias) for too long,” writes Ing, “as PCs stabilized, data center improved, and INTC demonstrated a flexible approach to succeed in tablets and access existing China consumer channels.””
— http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2015/01/05/intel-mkm-ups-to-buy-on-data-center-surge/

In this same post Microsoft says there are 12 million physical servires running Windows Server 2003.  On July 14, 2015 Microsoft will end support for Windows Server 2003.  Kind of funny to think WinSvr2003 was the last OS I worked on at Microsoft and it is being retired.  Windows XP was last desktop OS I worked on.

Part of the growth potential is also China and Mobile where I now spend way more of my time than working on OS issues.  So it is nice to see that others think there is growth in these areas. The key is to be agile.

“INTC demonstrated a flexible approach to succeed in tablets and access existing China consumer channels.”

”