A new way to write a blog. Questions from my son and my answers

I lost the passion to write about data centers, but my son Wyatt has helped me think of a new way to write.  It has been so long, but I am looking forward to answers Wyatt's questions about data centers.

Part of what has motivated Wyatt is I told him he can keep the money from the Google Adsense I added to the website.

So what does Wyatt want to know? His questions are what convinced me to start writing.  Here are Wyatt's first set of questions.

how many servers are there?

how much data can be stored?

how many people will usually work there?

how many computers are there?

do they run 247?

how much stuff can go wrong?

How much money is it?

Warning for Creative Innovative Projects (humor)

It is standard for executives at big companies to say they want creative innovative projects. The call for innovation and creativity is rarely delivered. Why?

“Creative innovative thinking causes unexpected impacts to the insecure.

WARNING: keep small children and insecure adults from disruptive innovation. The small kids will have fun while insecure adults will get mad at them for embracing change.”

— Dave Ohara

The problem with innovation and creativity is the insecure people will react in irrational ways.

The DNA (values) of Facebook #5 of the Big 5

Facebook is the youngest of the Big 5 Internet Companies. Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon are all older. Facebook being the youngest has grown the fastest to be a presence in the data center industry. My earliest interaction with Facebook was through the Open Compute Project and over time I have made friends at Facebook and other friends have joined Facebook.

I have been diving into technical details like Facebook's social graph. the Graph API is one area.

Now I understand a bit more on how Facebook's Internet systems work and are designed.

Another question is how is Facebook different than the other 4 of the Big 5.

I had a chance to talk to some executives who have worked with Facebook for years and I presented this slide as part of what we think is the Facebook way.

One construction friend who I was chatting I shared my perspective. This video I used afterwards to let FB employees explain their vision of graph search.

The other big 5 I am more familiar with especially since I worked at two of them (Microsoft and Apple).

The Big 5 are Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook

Today the Big 5 Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook are now the largest market cap companies. Exxon Mobile is now #6.

These companies are making more investment in data centers than others. Are these 5 combined over 50% of the industry's capacity? If not now, when will they be.

Everyone in the information industry needs to keep an eye on this group. If not you may miss the changes that will make things more difficult for your business.  Or miss opportunities created by movements by the Big 5.

Need to bring my Yellow/Red Referee cards to DC Conference

I count myself extremely lucky hanging around some of the thought leaders in the data center industry. In the past I would travel with and spend time at conferences with Mike Manos when he ran Microsoft's data center group and Olivier Sanche when he ran eBay's data center group. I still get to hang with the thought leaders and one of the things I see too often are the sales guys who would circle like sharks around a target, waiting for when they could move in. Most of the time the sales sharks keep their distance.

Sometimes though the sales sharks commit when there is no opening and they interject themselves in to an existing conversation. After a minute if the sales shark doesn't back off, we figure out whose turn it is to save the DC executive from the sales shark.

What do you do? We typically joke about it later. I can tell you never do any of these sales sharks score a "so glad that guy interrupted our conversation to tell me about his product/service." So, how do you stop the sales shark predator behavior? Is this just part of what comes with going to a DC conference?

The idea I had years ago, and I still have them is a package of Yellow and Red referee cards used by soccer referees.

If I pull a yellow card and have one of our friends take a picture we would have record of committing a foul, interrupting a conversation. We could then share the image with others, and hopefully the sales shark would go away. This could be pretty funny too. Dude perfect has their own youtube video.

if we wanted to make it even funnier we could make it like a photobomb with someone inserting themselves with a yellow card.