30 minutes to get perspective on where covid-19 could lead - Scenario Planning w Peter Schwartz

If you want a way to think about what Covid-19 will mean and you are so tired of the day to day media. Consider spending 30 minutes to watch the Youtube video referenced in this blog post. The video has only 1,200 views so it is not wide spread, but it provides a good basis on how to think about what is going on.

Years ago I bought a book by Peter Schwartz, “The Art of the Long View, Planning for the Future in an uncertain world." And I am back reading his book and another book about the inventor of Scenario Planning Pierre Wack.

Curious what Peter Schwartz has lately I forgot he had joined Salesforce as SVP of strategic planning. Was pleased to see he published version 8 of his perspective on Covid-19 on Aug 31. The slides are here.

Slide 33 gets to the Future.

And you can watch Peter explain these slides in this youtube video.

Microsoft announces its Edge Solution - Azure Modular Datacenter

Microsoft announced its modular datacenter offering.

I want to say I know of one person who is no longer at Microsoft who had this idea 8 years ago. What has changed during this time is the efforts at the edge, cloud computing, satellite communications, and Covid.

Combine all of these and the conditions are so different now for an edge solution.

Where you going to put this?

How much empty parking lot space is there in offices or even empty loading docks?

Dropbox goes for WFH, publishes great data

Covid has impacted the workplace and when people will return to the office is an unknown.

Dropbox published a blog post on their effort. https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/work-culture/economist-intelligence-unit-distributed-work-study.

One of the graphs they published is the following. Check out what the biggest workplace distractions are.

Bet you so many people out there think it is 2nd from the last item. “Consuming non-work related media.”

Covid is accelerating the decline of pulp and paper which is better for the environment

WaPo has an article on the closing of a pulp and paper mill in Wisconsin.

A warning from Wisconsin

Wisconsin sells more paper, employs more people and has more paper mills than any other state. The industry was already in decline, but the coronavirus delivered a death blow.

30 years ago I was fanatically working on typography and the focus was the end product, the printed page. Type on the screen, the fonts you used to create were temporarily representations of your end product what you print and give to others. At the beginning of desktop publishing, printing was absolutely necessary. Three years later, it hit that why spend all kinds of effort doing things to preserve the ways of the past. The future was fonts for the screen, and started talking about the idea and eventually it got to Bill Gates and he loved the idea which then came back down to me as why did I tell Bill my idea. I did not tell Bill, the idea went on its own.

And now it is all about the screen. Printing is such a low priority. And with Covid you print only for your own use. You no longer print and distribute copies in a meeting. The distribution is electronic. And so much of the impactful content as shifted video which you cannot print.

Creating new ideas that shake up an industry is part of good problem solving. And I love problem solving.

Time to start writing again. Greening the Data Center Assets is the next step

I started writing about green data centers before anyone was using the term. No ones data center strategy was carbon neutral. Now Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and even Amazon has a carbon neutral strategy. It is so obvious now that the right thing for these big companies is to make the effort to lead the industry and be carbon neutral.

Given this acceptance I got bored covering the industry. It has been interesting watching each company change. Green peace and NYtimes articles putting pressure on the companies.

This morning on a walk with my dogs. It hit me. The next step is the greening of the data center assets in the data center. Electrical, Mechanical and other equipment is 50% of the cost of the data center and no one knows if that equipment is made in a carbon neutral environment. The IT equipment can be 5 to 10 times the cost of the DC over the life of the DC. Is it carbon neutral. Most likely not.

Now that the data center energy use is carbon neutral it’s time to look at the things in the data center. It look 10 years for the green data center to be an accepted term.

Greening of the data center assets is next step.