5G is the first network designed for Data First and voice is a much lower priority

Arstechnica has a good article on why buying a 5G smartphone may not be a good move for a while. One of the main ideas to get in your head is 5G is has multiple spectrums.

Below is a graphic from the Arstechnica article showing the millimeter wave spectrum that 5G adds on top of 4G.

So sounds good lots more spectrum, but you thought you had problems with 4G LTE coverage. mmwave 5G is going to be worse for coverage in a building or in a car. To get 5G coverage you will need an antenna outside or an internal antenna system connected to the network.

Still a big confused?

How about this as a way to understand 5G. The 4G LTE spectrum will reach you from 10 miles away. mm microwave can be as short as 1,000 ft of an antenna. Handing off between that many antennas on a voice call would be hard.

One study I haven’t seen yet even though the 5G latency is dramatically better than 4G what is the latency and throughput impact when you jump from one 5G antenna to another?

5G will cover LTE, 802.11, and mmMicrowave technologies. Do you think will be addressed in 2019. I don’t think so.

Lee Kirby has retired as President of Uptime Institute, now only focus is on Salute

In 2016, Uptime Institute announced that Lee Kirby was President. Thanks to friends, I heard 2 weeks ago Lee will be retiring from Uptime. And we were both on the flight to SEA to PHX on Sunday to 7x24 Exchange and Lee told me in person he has retired, And the written proof is Lee Kirby’s LinkedIn profile, showing Lee only job is Chairman of Salute, inc. 

Congratulations to Lee Kirby! A bunch of us will get together on Tues to celebrate Lee’s retirement.

Also went to Uptime Institute’s website. Did not see any press announcements,  if you look at the uptime institute team there is no mention of Lee Kirby. 

Rich Karlgaard 7x24 Opening Keynote

Rich Karlgaard, Forbes publisher had a talk called Technology and 2018 Turbulence

When Rich walked on stage the title had change to “Thriving in the Age of Smart Machines. How to build an unstoppable amidst unstoppable technology acceleration and change.”

I was busy taking note and found this article which summarizes Rich’s talk given to GM. https://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/news/2018/03/technology-adaptability-are-key-to-keeping-us-industry-on-top

What got funny was when Rich used the decline of GM talking about the corvette to the Cadillac Cimarron when the company was running from a financial aspect.

Contrast being a numbers person at GM vs. Jeff Bezos who has a two pizza number for how big a team should be. 

Rich added the following slide for the data center audience discussing the importance of talent.

What I took from this slide is how important math skills are to work in technology companies. If you are interested in the rest of the presentation you can read this post on the GM presentation. https://www.hydrocarbonprocessing.com/news/2018/03/technology-adaptability-are-key-to-keeping-us-industry-on-top

A peak at Amaya Souarez presentation at Fall 2018 7x24 Exchange, adoption of Robots

Part 2 of a peak at 7x24 Exchange is with Amaya Souarez. Part 1 with David Schirmacher is here.

Amaya has a long background in the data center industry with time at Microsoft, CyrusOne and now with First Data Corporation. Amaya is working on Global Infrastructure Operations at First Data Corporation and she is presenting on robotic process automation. Huh?

Let’s give a simple example of what a robot could do. You have a technician show up to service a backup generator, unit #1. The technician is an experienced person working on many generators. They show up at the building. Badge in. Given access to the appropriate areas. Enter the building. Where is generator 1. Working on enough data centers they have a feeling where the general location is in the building. There are maps that show exits. But the individual rooms are not labeled. They find their way to the generator room, badging in. There are 4 generators in front of them. Which generator is #1. Are they labeled no. Is there anyone else in the room? no. They could wait until someone shows up. Look at each unit trying to find the serial number of the unit they are working on. Seems like a big waste of time. Why isn’t there a location bot. A service that helps the technician find generator 1? Why isn’t there service history that comes up showing past maintenance events when they should up in front of the device?

That is what a robotic process could do. But why is this so hard. Amaya and I discussed how processes turn into ways that are so hard to change. What is all too often a case is the resistance to change is a primary driver. And misinformation gets used to shoot down the ideas to change. The classic use of this is fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD).

“The term appeared as far back as the 1920s.[1][2] A similar formulation “doubts fears and uncertainties” reaches back to 1965.[3] By 1975, the term was appearing abbreviated as FUD in marketing and sales contexts:[4] and in public relations.[5] The term FUD is also alternatively rendered as “Fear Uncertainty and Disinformation”.[6]
One of the messages dealt with is FUD—the fear, uncertainty and doubt on the part of customer and sales person alike that stifles the approach and greeting.
FUD was first used with its common current technology-related meaning by Gene Amdahl in 1975, after he left IBM to found his own company, Amdahl Corp.: “FUD is the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that IBM sales people instill in the minds of potential customers who might be considering Amdahl products.”[7] The term has also been attributed to veteran Morgan Stanley computer analyst Ulrich Weil. This usage of FUD to describe disinformation in the computer hardware industry is said to have led to subsequent popularization of the term.[8]”

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt

Amaya hopes to dispel the FUD that keeps people from using robotic process automation covering details on how to measure the impact of bots.

Bots will come in the next wave of AR and VR solutions.

A peak at David Schirmacher's keynote at Fall 7x24 Exchange

David Schirmacher is going to present the 7x24 Exchange keynote on Tuesday, Oct 23 2018. One of the things I am doing for a change is reaching out to a few of speakers at 7x24 Exchange and chatting before hand about what they plan to present. My first post is with David Schirmacher.

David I chatted a bit. We actually talked a lot. We chatted for over 2 hours, and we are going to chat again. So how do I summarize 2 hours of discussion into a blog post?

The most recognized data center metric is PUE. Why don’t we have more metrics? There have been attempts by some industry organizations. Even though DCIM systems have been built by a wide range of companies bragging about customers, why don’t they have amazing insights backed by petabytes of data into new data center performance indicators that are the new KPI every says they are using?

PUE was invented by Chris Malone (currently at Google) and Christian Belady (currently at Microsoft) when they were both at HP. Here is a nice presentation on the history by Henry Coles from Mar 19, 2014.

If you want the original paper you can get it on the ASME site.

“Metrics and an Infrastructure Model to Evaluate Data Center Efficiency
Christian L. Belady and Christopher G. Malone
This work describes two data center efficiency metrics: Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Compute Power Efficiency (CPE). PUE characterizes the fraction of the total data center power used for IT work. CPE characterizes the overall data center efficiency, considering IT equipment utilization as well as how power is used in the data center. The PUE results from three data center studies are presented here. The data suggests that a carefully designed and managed data center has a PUE of 2.0. More studies are required to determine the range of values for the typical data center. A data center infrastructure and energy cost model is presented to compare hardware costs to infrastructure and energy costs. The impact of PUE on these costs is examined to illustrate the impact of data center efficiency on the total cost of operating a data center.”

— http://proceedings.asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=1595398

I know David Schirmacher is passionate about metrics and he has regularly been reviewing his keynote presentation. What occurred to me is what few know is David‘s background. David worked at JLL and Compass Management running an operations team which of course needed metrics. Next David spent 12 years at Goldmans Sachs as Global Head of Engineering and Critical Systems. During that time there David realized he needed software to support the use of metrics. David then joined FieldView Solutions to build a system for metrics. Digital Realty recruited David to be SVP of Operations, and he realized quickly he needed a system for metrics, and he built another system that would work for Digital’s need.

In Summary, David has spent over 30 years in data center jobs where he developed his own metrics for operations, and he built two different systems for metrics. How many other people do you know have that experience and perspective? Not many. Which is why when we chat our conversations all too often turn into 2 hour discussions. The nice thing is David has been working on his keynote to make sure he gets the ideas clearly communicated with enough time for questions in the 9:00-10:00a time slot.

Metrics come from passionate people like Chris Malone and Christian Belady. David Schirmacher is another one of those people.

“Keynote:
Unleashing the Metrics of Cost and Performance

David Schirmacher (bio)
President, Reset Advisors, LLC and
President, 7×24 Exchange International

Many billions of dollars a year are spent in the design, construction and operation of mission critical data centers. For an industry that supports the core of the global business economy and impacts the lives of virtually everyone on the planet, it is hard to believe that so little of what we do is driven by a common set of measurable metrics. The introduction of the PUE metric in 2006 was a major leap in beginning to define performance but it only addresses one slice of a very large pie. Numerous metrics have followed but none have achieved the same almost universal acceptance. In this presentation, David will discuss some of the historical challenges to metrics adoption and will take a deeper dive into the measurement of cost and performance and the tools that leading edge firms use to validate their performance.”

— https://conferences.7x24exchange.org/fall2018/schedule/