AST-Global Data Center Container

Data Center Knowledge had an interesting article today on the AST-Global data center container, displayed at CeBIT. Does anyone know what the tie is between AST and IBM (i.e.: the IBM PMDC container is made by AST, or the AST container is made by IBM)?

I did a search for AST-Global, not being very familiar with them and found an interesting Power Point presentation by Pablo Fernandez of AST. Slide 53 is interesting... "The future is MOBILE" and then he lists how containers are better than traditional data centers: "Short term projects, disaster recovery, remote locations, hostile environments, space limitations and expensive real-estate".

Slide 55 goes on to talk about the "PMDC Data Center Park". This is an entire data center park, built with multi-PMDCs -- no building, just concrete slab. This of course made me think of the Microsoft 4th Generation data center concept from Michael Manos back in December last year.

Scalability and mobility, along with protection and potential efficiency gains are really making the case for data center containers. I never thought I would list 'mobility' as an attractive feature of a data center, but it is growing on me. After a phone call I had today discussing containers, I think I will sit down and really pour through the container offerings from IBM, HP, Sun, Dell, Rackable, Verari and others. It may not be the solution for every need or company, but I think (at this stage) there is definately more to it than what I am seeing.