Data Center Stocks

While the Dow, S&P and NASDAQ were all down today, I believe the tech stocks are going to continue to be a bright spot in an otherwise bleak market. I found a new web site tonight that I really enjoyed playing around in and researching data center stocks and the industry as a whole. So as to help justify the hour plus that I spent on the site I thought I would share some of the information I discovered.

The site ( MFFAIS) lets you en ter a stock symbol and it then tells you information about financial institutional/fund ownership of the stock. The numbers that interested me were the number of funds that owned the particular stock and the percentages bought or sold over the given time period. For a small group of data center stocks that interested me here are the results.

Format: Stock --- Shares owned by funds --- % buying --- % selling

Equinix --- 399 --- 48.45% --- 45.37%
Level3 --- 347 --- 40.95% --- 37.41%
Digital Realty Trust --- 310 --- 55.28% --- 39.02%
Savvis --- 214 --- 46.91% --- 43.82%
DuPont Fabros --- 160 --- 51.47% --- 41.91%
Internap --- 108 --- 41.17% --- 45.13%
Terremark --- 90 --- 58.97% --- 26.92%
Switch&Data --- 8 --- 0 --- 0

I assume that anything within +- 5% probably isn't of too much concern given how much regular trading activity happens. I still believe though that this is further evidence that the data center stocks are doing good and are seen favorably by fund managers. For the sake of comparison take a look at Cisco and Intel. Besides Microsoft they were the only two other tech stocks on the MFFAIS "top 10 Most U.S. most held stocks" list. Cisco stock is held by 2,077 funds and Intel by 2,009 funds!

Some other interesting web surfing that came up while searching for financial information on the tech industry included:

• The Wells Fargo Advantage Discovery fund certainly looks interesting. The largest stock in their portfolio is Equinix and a story on Yahoo reports that they are seeking big growth in the $406 million fund.

• Market Watch has an article about theJacob Internet fund manager seeing promise in tech companies.
  

• The Wall Street Journal had an interesting blog post about Wall Street analysts leaving for tech startup companies!
  

Forbes has an excellent interview with Diane Bryant, CIO of Intel. I had planned on summarizing more of my favorite points from this interview - but my favorite was her thoughts on a cultural change happening within Intel (and certainly other companies) about everything changing to an IT service versus a "server".

"If you deploy virtualization, you get a cultural change. It's not your server anymore. It's a service provided by IT to your department with a certain service level agreement. Then you can aggregate multiple apps onto that server and your utilization goes up. But you have to get over that cultural element, which is, "Where's my server?"

Finally -- does anyone know of an online tool (preferably free) that will let you build your own stock index? I would love to build my own index of favorite stocks and track it on a regular basis. Please leave a comment if you know of something. Thanks!

Data Centers in Iowa

The Des Moines Register ran an article yesterday about the growing trend of data centers coming to Iowa. There isn't (unfortunately) any new news in this article..... it is just a re-cap of why Iowa is so popular. Iowa being popular and a logical place for data centers is nothing new to me -- but it is nice to see the attention it is getting lately. The article discusses new facilities in the state from Google, Microsoft and TEAM Companies.

The usual factors are listed for why Iowa is ideal: Low costs, green energy, skilled labor, and rich tax incentives. There is a hint in the article that Microsoft will locate in West Des Moines, but I personally still think it is up for grabs exactly where in Des Moines they will land.

Check out the article here.

Security and Compliance In the Cloud

My latest column at Systems Management News is out. I dive (one more time) into cloud computing (it's in fashion you know). This time I talk a little more about security and compliance in the cloud and what is holding back the enterprise from further embracing it.

Check out the article here.

Alliant Energy - Business Continuity Lessons

Wisconsin Technology Network has a Business Continuity Plan article about Alliant Energy and their story of the June flooding in Cedar Rapids. The story basically runs through how they executed their BCP plan and the lessons learned during the event. The interesting part (to me) was the discussion about having contractual assurance of a hot-site for Disaster Recovery and how it is different in a city like Cedar Rapids vs. a large city.

Check out the article here.

Monday Links

In an attempt to clean up the growing number of Firefox tabs I have open, I thought I would share some of sites of interest I have run across lately:

• TechCrunch reports that LivePlace.com is set to launch a photo-realistic virtual world rendered in the cloud. It may be using the Otoy engine -- a very impressive 3D rendering company. I played around with Google's new virtual world Lively a little bit the other night.....pretty cool, but I think they should just buy Otoy and LivePlace and really give SecondLife a run for their money.

• It has been confirmed that AOL will sell X-drive. I worked for an online storage company in the dot-com days and X-Drive was always the one to chase. I think the evolution to storage cloud offerings may be almost complete.
  

• EMC to buy StorageTek? ChannelWeb explores the reasoning behind this rumor. It makes sense to me - StorageTek is better suited for a company like EMC than Sun.
  

• For some reason, I keep forgetting about a company on my "cool-companies" list. DataSynapse continues to make some nice products and has a lot going on. Recently they were awarded the best clustering or Grid solution at Next Generation Data Center conference (I really need to get to this one next year). They announced a partnership with Adaptivity and the results of a survey that showed High Performance Computing ranking higher than cloud computing as a driving IT initiative.

• I think everyone should click through to this Douglas Gourlay post. :) Douglas - the only thing missing is an acronym (GSOVCaaS) : everything in IT must be an acronym. BTW - MY all-time favorite post and definition discussion of what Cloud Computing is, is given by Irving Wladawsky-Berger. I think he sums up the topic very nicely.

• Michael Morris has an interesting post on Cisco LISP (Locator/ID Seperation Protocol) at NetworkWorld.

Yahoo Omaha Data Center Rumor Confirmed

A few weeks back the Tech Hermit blog wrote about rumors of Yahoo building a data center in Omaha. Today, the Omaha World-Herald newspaper confirms that state and local officials are at a "very serious stage" of negotiations to get Yahoo in to Omaha. The decision could potentially be made in the next five to six weeks.

Maybe Omaha will be one of the six locations for the HP-Yahoo-Intel cloud.

Check out the article here.

Don't Forget the Network

My latest column at Systems Management News is out! I am hoping to get into some more networking topics in future columns. WAN optimization and acceleration tools interest me and dark fiber, carriers and DWDM type stuff are things I would like to explore further. In this column I discuss networking in general and how Microsoft and Google connect their data centers.

Check out the column here.

Also -- Please check out the rest of the magazine - they have a lot of good articles and columnists.

• Information on Microsoft Midori - a legacy free operating system in the works.
• Emerson Network Power - new cooling system
• Networking: Switching to a new design for intelligent LAN
• Windows 2008 Clustering
• The Savvy Manager
• The Storage Rack

Mystery Data Center Coming to Indianola, Iowa?

The Des Moines Register reports that a "as-yet-undisclosed" company is looking at Indianola (roughly 15 miles south of Des Moines) as a potential site for a data center. The site request came from MidAmerican Energy - who has more than 1,200 megawatts of wind generating facilities in operation.

The Indianola development director stated that it was not Microsoft - the local utilities do not provide enough electricity to support such a data center. Indianola's fiber infrastructure is a major draw though for a data center.

It will be interesting to see who is selecting this Des Moines suburb for a data center - as soon as I hear more I will post it.

Check out the Des Moines Register article here.

Microsoft Data Center Monitoring System

CIO reports that Microsoft is using 2,000 temperature/humidity sensors - using ZigBee wireless in several of its facilities. Microsoft demonstrated their prototype system to the Uptime Institute. Check out the CIO article here.

This news (of course) made me think.... how cool would it be to combine this wireless mesh of sensors, with Autodesk's Revit (Building Information Modeling software), and OpenSimulator - like IBM is using to present a virtual data center. I am a visual learner and big fan of the virtual world stuff like OpenSimulator offers. I've played around in SecondLife - but have not been 'overly' impressed just yet. The vision that IBM has started with OpenSimulator/Virtual Worlds is pretty cool - and the potential to integrate other products (monitoring/management) into that is pretty exciting (for a geek like me).

IDS - Ship based Data Centers - Update

I'm not sure if the idea is growing on me or what, but the notion of a data center on a ship doesn't sound as silly as it did the very first time I heard it. Back in January of this year IDS (International Data Security) introduced us to the idea of putting containers on ships that were due to be scrapped.

There is an update now on how the company is coming with the idea, and they also do a nice job of explaining how it is accomplished and some of what the value proposition is. I asked questions about the business model, security and fiber, and they have addressed those in the comments section.

Check out the update and answers here.

TEAM Technologies and Iowa Health System Partnership

The previously announced information about the TEAM Technologies data center in Waukee, Iowa has an update. The Des Moines Business Record reports that TEAM and Iowa Health System have announced a partnership for the Waukee data center. Iowa Health will use half of the data center space developed in the initial phase.

Bill Leaver, president and chief operating officer of IHS, says that as data management needs continue to grow, TEAM appears to be a "natural partner" that will best meet those needs, while allowing IHS to save capital for other investments, such as the purchase of clinical equipment that will directly benefit patients. "When we're dealing with millions of records every year that contain confidential and critical information, it requires the utmost care and expertise," Leaver said. "Iowa Health System and TEAM Technologies thoroughly and completely understand the responsibility associated with maintaining and managing this data. We don't take that lightly and never will."

Check out the Business Record article here

Cloud Computing Outages

A fair amount of press has been covering the recent Amazon S3 outages. I personally would re-iterate the words of Reuven Cohen - in that Amazon is pioneering some of this technology and really should not be so heavily criticized. The cloud market is still in its infancy and problems will be worked out now that make the cloud even stronger in the future. I have also become somewhat of a fan of Amazon CTO Werner Vogels. I think he has done some pretty amazing stuff at Amazon and the best is perhaps yet to come.

Jeff Feinman at Systems Management News has an excellent article on the recent Cloud outages, specifically at Amazon and Apple. Check it out here.

There was also a very good article on GigaOm about why the Enterprise is not ready to trust the cloud.

New 50MW Data Center for CRG West

CRG West announced today the development of an energy-efficient data center campus in Santa Clara , California. Expected to be complete in the second quarter of 2009 the 350,000 square-foot, 50 megawatt campus will be powered by Silicon Valley Power.

"At this campus CRG West will provide data-center and peering solutions to its customers along the continuum from single-cabinet colocation space through custom-built cages of any size up to blocks of wholesale data center space up to 20 MW. Additionally, CRG West can construct one of the planned buildings to meet the exact specifications of a single user for any corporation that wishes to design its data center but lease it rather than fund the up-front capital required to construct it."

The Bay area was ideal for CRG West because of the high demand, lower-cost power and densely populated peering opportunities. CRG West provides wholesale data center and retail colocation space, connectivity and and an Internet Peering Exchange.

TEAM Technologies to Build Data Center in Waukee

Cedar Falls, IA based TEAM Technologies is looking to build a $14 million data center in Waukee. This was published tonight on both WHO-TV and MSNBC. Waukee is a suburb of Des Moines on the far eastern edge of the city.

It looks like the data center will be built next to a MidAmerican power substation and the Waukee Mayor is excited to bring the server farm to his town.

Check out the WHO-TV article and video here

and the MSNBC article here.

Microsoft's Iowa Data Center

The suspense is killing me! I ran across this post from Des Moines' WHO TV station - Dave Price claims that Microsoft has been eyeing West Des Moines or Urbandale for the site selection.

I was in Des Moines / Urbandale this weekend. I really can't think that West Des Moines is going to be the site they select -- my guess is either Urbandale or Waukee.

If I don't go crazy first - I'll post here the second I hear anything!

Cloud Computing Aritcles and Blogroll

Besides containers, my other recent fascination has been with cloud computing. Put another way (thanks to Gianpaolo Carrero) I am really in to nephology (the study of clouds). I'll have another Systems Management News article on the topic in the near future, but for now I thought I would list some of the articles that I have run across recently and my blogroll on the topic of clouds.

Articles/Sites:

• Cloud Computing Portal

• Information Week - The Rise of Enterprise-class Cloud Computing

• Zimory - This one REALLY intrigues me.....will have to read up on it more, but definitely check it out.

• Amazon White Paper on Cloud Architectures and best practices of Amazon S3, EC2, SimpleDB and SQS

Blog Roll:

• The Wisdom of Clouds - James Urquhart

• Cloud Computing Journal

• Cloudy Times: Markus Klems - I found this one via his post on the "Classification of Cloud Computing Stakeholders"

• Dell - In the Clouds - Condensing ideas on the future of cloud computing

• Cloud Security

• HP Communities - Ben Reid: Head in the Cloud

• Elastic Vapor - Life in the Cloud - from Enomaly's Reuven Choen

• Cloud Blog - by Roland Judas

• an EXCELLENT post on the future of Enterprise applications and clouds - Gianpaolo's MSDN blog

Containers, Clouds and Rumors

There has certainly been a lot of news in the industry this week and although I haven't completely caught up yet (I'm attempting to take vacation this week), here is a quick run-down of what I have seen so far.....

• First and foremost, my apologies for getting some figures wrong in my Systems Management News article. I said that Microsoft has 220 containers and 30,000 servers ; well, let's just say I need to stop writing articles so late at night. :) Going back to my own post of the AFCOM keynote that Michael Manos gave, at 1000 to 2000 systems per container it is more like 300,000 servers total.
  

• Containers were a hot story today, as HP announced the POD (Performance Optimized Datacenter).
  

• There were a couple of good articles on Cloud Computing I ran across. The first one, from Douglas Gourlay at Cisco is a nice wrap-up of the hype-filled term and how it is really just a technology shift that is happening across many layers and industries. I agree that the term cloud doesn't really mean much today -- I think we'll look back in a few years and realize that things were really just getting moving in terms of true Cloud Computing. He mentions workload portability, which I have been intrigued with for a while and was why I followed Platespin, who was acquired by Novell back in February. Doug's mention of the fictional Skynet made me realize that Cisco is so good that aiming for clouds isn't enough - they are into outter space newtorking!

• Another Cisco story this week is the press release about enhancements to IP over DWDM. I am still (somewhere in my spare time) trying to pursue my CCDA certification and DWDM technology is well..... pretty cool stuff. You should read the press release for yourself, but the main news is that they have doubled the reach of the CRS-1 40Gbps IPoDWDM to an industry leading 2,000 kilometers without regeneration.

• The second cloud computing article was very interesting -- for some rumors! Reuven Cohen from Enomoly gossips about project "Red Dog" from Microsoft. I remember reading about this before (because of the Clifford the Big Red Dog reference). It's basically saying that this project is meant to be an "EC2 for Windows" cloud offering. The second rumor is that of a Chinese cloud project "under a hydro dam", which when complete may exceed a million servers. For whatever reason, my hunch is that Sun is involved in this.

That's all for now -- I've upgrade my Ipod Touch to version 2.0, so I am having fun with the AppStore. I'm still bummed that the National League lost the all-star game, but excited that next year it will be in St. Louis!!

Systems Management News - Containers

My latest column at Systems Management News is out. I couldn't hold back any longer....I had to talk about containers. I could probably go 3 more columns worth on the topic, but I attempt to cover the major manufacturers who have come out with container products: Sun, Rackable, Verari, and IBM.

Check out the column here

Mariott Shifts Disaster Recovery to Iron Mountain

Mariott International has migrated their disaster recovery plan from a 3rd party contract to their own insourced Recovery and Development Center (RDC). The Mariott RDC will reside in Iron Mountain's 145 acre "underground city", about an hour north of Pittsburgh. The data center is 220 feet underground, is naturally cooled, and highly secure (i.e.: "various government entities" are there).

"John Morency, a research director at Gartner, says the need for quicker response and recovery times is driving many companies to weigh the cost of their existing contracts with external providers against the expense of doing the work internally. Plus, many IT staffs want added flexibility to manage and test their disaster recovery processes, rather than being subjected to the rigid time frames of many third-party agreements."

Mariott found that the cost of the 10 year colo deal was neutral to its existing agreement for disaster recovery. Because the ambient temperature of the mine is 55 to 60 degrees Mariott will be able to reduce energy consumption, as well as lower operating costs.

Now, if they could just make it so you load some container data centers into the mountain, we're set!

Check out the CIO case study here.

Lee Technologies - International Expansion

Lee Technologies International Service, Ltd. launched today; an Ireland based operation to service Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Additionally they announced a join venture with Ireland based Zenith Technologies, to form LZ Technologies, Ltd.

“Surging fiber and infrastructure build-out required to deliver cloud computing is driving demand for mission-critical solutions providers with the capability to design, build and operate data centers and other mission-critical facilities on a global scale,” said Lee Kirby, Vice President & GM, Lee Technologies, and the new head of LTSI. “After providing mission-critical solutions to leading commercial enterprises and government agencies throughout North America for a quarter-century, LTSI represents a tremendous opportunity to extend our capabilities overseas.”

Lee Technologies is an infrastructure solution provider for large enterprise and government organizations.

Check out the press release here.

Cedar Falls Data Center Helps Out Flood Victims

Just a quick link to a story about data centers and the 2008 Iowa Floods. The article shows how TEAM Technologies helped out the local utility company and Iowa Health System.

Iowa Health, which operates 11 hospitals and 135 clinics across the state, stored some of its critical data in a building in downtown Cedar Rapids, but also duplicate data stored at Team Technologies, said Jim Mormann, vice president and chief information officer at Iowa Health.

"We called Team when we knew our building in Cedar Rapids was going to flood," Mormann said. "We moved 130 servers from the basement of our office in downtown Cedar Rapids to the Team data center in Cedar Falls. It was quite the effort, but our servers were running again within 12 hours thanks to the staff at Team."

Check out the Waterloo / Cedar Falls Courier article here.

Huge DNS Vulnerability

Dan Kaminsky from IO Active revealed a Huge vulnerability in DNS today. He noted that it was a DNS Cache poisoning attack and is effective against all major DNS servers. Since DNS is the glue of the internet, this vulnerability is a BIG one. Most major vendors have supplied patches already.

Check out the rest of the information here:

US Cert Vulnerability Note VU#800113
Systems Management News article
Cnet article
InformationWeek article

Data Center Cabling

Just a quick link to a story about cabling -- I know, pretty basic stuff, but this article has some good reminders of the basics and cabling is a big part of any data center I have ever seen. The article also quotes a contractor working on the mammoth Terremark NAP of the Capitol Region data center in Culpepper, Virginia.

Check out the Government Computer News article here

$10B in Loan Gurarantees for Renewable Energy

The data center industry should be all over this one. The U.S. Department of Energy announced a solicitation for up to $10 billion in Federal loan guarantees for renewable energy and efficiency projects.

“Loan guarantees from the Department will enable project developers to bridge the financing gap between pilot and demonstration projects to full commercially viable projects that employ new or significantly improved energy technologies,” said Jeffrey Kupfer, the Acting Deputy Secretary of Energy.

Check out the complete article on the site that is becoming a regular stop for me - RenewableEnergyworld.com

The Three P's of Disaster Recovery

Just a quick link out to my latest column in Systems Management News -- this issue covers some basics on Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning. I wrote this column after the EF5 Tornado that came all too close to where I live, but before the Iowa Floods.

Check out the article here.

Microsoft Site Selection: Des Moines, Iowa

As many sites have already reported -- Microsoft has announced that it is the Greater Des Moines area that is under consideration for building their data center. I've always wondered if the surrounding towns of Ankeny or Waukee would be a good place for a data center.

The news was all over today, but check it out at Data Center Knowledge, the Seattle Times, Des Moines Register (complete with usual bickering about taxes) and Tech Hermit.

Microsoft To Build a Data Center in Iowa!

Om Malik - You Rule! Om talked with Microsoft's Debra Chrapaty after a speech she delivered at Structure 08. She talked about Microsoft data centers, the use of containers, and the number of data center builds in progress....including the one in IOWA that they will be building!!

Now -- this news was actually reported back in February of this year, so I'm not getting too excited, but it is good to hear that the Iowa project is still in the works. Now the guessing game begins for which city they will build in. For anyone living under a rock, Google is building a data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa right now. My guesses for where they would build (although I really have no clue) would be:

1. The greater Des Moines area.
2. Marshalltown
3. Cedar Falls
4. Ames

Hey Microsoft - if you need any help just let me know! :)


Check out the post from Data Center Knowledge here, and Om's post and video interview here.

Wrap up of Tech Conferences Last Week

The airlines made out pretty good this week from the Tech industry. There was a ton of conferences and news this past week from clouds, to energy, to Bill Gates retiring.

I, unfortunately, was not able to attend any of these conferences, primarily due to an equally hectic schedule of things going on at work. Luckily there was a lot of blogs and news sites reporting on the various events and here are some highlights of what I have seen.

• Cisco Live! in Orlando. Cisco had events in Second Life and John Chambers keynote. Here are some links to items from that conference: Michael J. Morris micro-blogged the event (complete with pictures); Cisco talked about the shortage of skilled engineers and their new elearning network; Jim Duffy comments on Cisco flushing out their data center vision; Wendell Odom comments on the announcement that Cisco will break out the CCNA certification into 3 new exams (Voice, Security and wireless; John Cox comments on the demonstration between Cisco and Nivis of a wireless IP mesh network using IPv6; and finally, there was news about he creation of a consortium to drive global security. Cisco, IBM, Intel, Juniper and Microsoft formed the Industry Consortium for Advancement of Security on the Internet (ICASI).

• GigaOm's Structure 08 - San Francisco: the two highlights of this one (IMO) if I could have attended would have been Werners Vogels (Amazon CTO) and Debra Chrapaty (Microsoft). Michael Halligan did some live blogging, Rich Miller reported from the conference and GigaOm has some videos (via Mogulus)! PC World has an article on Microsoft and the container model (I watched this one on the Mogulus videos -- very good presentation).

• O'Reilly Velocity - Burlingame, CA: This conference was about web performance and scalability. Rich Miller had several posts from the conference and O'Reilly has the video from Rich Wolski's Eucalyptus talk (Eucalyptus is an open source software infrastructure for cloud computing). You can also view the presentation given about the LinkedIn.com communication architecture.

• Data Center Energy Summit - Santa Clara: I haven't had much time to review this conference yet, but it looked pretty cool (pun intended). Rich has a post on the IBM Cool Blue rear door heat exchanger liquid cooling unit.

• LT Pact - Las Vegas: Although I had not heard of this conference before, I knew several people going to it. 3Tera was a sponsor and James Staten (Principal Analyst with Forrester) gave a keynote on Could/Grid computing. Anastasia Tubanos at WHIR blogs about the conference here.

• Catalyst Conference - San Diego: The Burton Group conference had themes of building the dynamic data center, identity management, security, wireless, SOA, and the new ways of work.
  

Intel Premiere - Containers Everywhere

Just a quick link to a nice article from Intel that appears in their Summer 2008 Premier magazine. It primarily covers the Rackable Systems IceCube container.

I continue to be really intrigued with the container model and will (in a future Systems Management News column) go into the container market a little deeper.

Mosso Enhancemens to The Hosting Cloud

In February of this year Cloud Hosting provider Mosso launched a new and improved version of its core hosting offering - The Hosting Cloud. The $100/month offering provided 24x7 support, 500GB bandwidth, 50GB disk space and 3 million web requests per month. In May they announced a private beta release of their new CloudFS Cloud Storage Service.

On Wednesday they announced a new Mosso control panel and provisioning system for The Hosting Cloud. This is a major release for Mosso and gives them a greater degree of scalability as well as greatly enhanced usability features. The Control Panel's file manager introduces a new snapshot tool that allows you to reinstate previous versions of your files. The control panel was built using the Google Web Toolkit, giving them a robust AJAX framework. The new provisioning system was built using Apache ServiceMix , a pretty cool foundation architecture laden with buzz words and acronyms ("an open source ESB (Enterprise Service Bus) that combines the functionality of a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and an Event Driven Architecture (EDA) to create an agile, enterprise ESB.) This new platform sets the stage for a broader range of services that Mosso can provide.

Mosso was started in late 2007 and is funded development from parent company Rackspace. The Mosso infrastructure is spread across Rackspace data centers.

I think the type of offering that Mosso presents is a pretty close picture of what the future of hosting is. It will take a while for mind-sets to change, but eventually customers will migrate from what Rackspace offers today to a Mosso Hosting Cloud. Reading the Mosso FAQ it is evident that they have already had many questions from those that are still stuck in the traditional hosting model mindset. I think with financial backing from Rackspace, their talented group of developers, and the right timing and service offering in a crowded market, Mosso can (and probably will) go far.

Links for June 24, 2008

As I mentioned a few days back, this is one busy week! Here is a wrap-up of some interesting links I have run across over the last few days:

• Aaron Phillips does a very nice job of summarizing the Iowa Floods and the impact on Fast Servers (now a part of Layered Tech). It echoes what I had said about the tremendous teamwork and compassion that was witnessed over the last few weeks and how this really makes a difference when experiencing an event like this.

• I ran across mashable.com (again). I really liked this site a year ago or so and my Bloglines list got so long I have neglected to go there in quite some time. It is a wonderful Web 2.0 resource though and I've also started following the author Pete Cashmore on twitter as well. I am a self-admitted information junkie, but even I am a bit overwhelmed at the content that this blog produces. Search Engine Journal recently did a very thorough review of the 70+ most useful Mashable.com posts.

• CleanTechnica.com has a write-up and video of vertical-axis wind turbines. Pretty interesting stuff....

• An IDC forecast was released last week that warns of the high cost to cool storage. The Storage Forum Blog has a nice write-up of the IDC report.

• IBM reports that it is opening Africa's first "Cloud Computing" center and a second cloud center in China.

  "The two new centers are part of IBM's expansion of its cloud computing capabilities around the world. IBM launched Europe's first Cloud Computing Center in Dublin, Ireland in March. Over the past year, IBM has provided cloud computing services to clients such as Wuxi City of China, Sogeti, the Local Professional Services Division of Capgemini, the Vietnamese government institutions and universities, and iTricity, a computing host service company based in the Netherlands"

• IBM has also launched "Blue Cloud", a "collection of enabling technologies that is used to create cloud computing experiences for customers in data center, hosting service and other cloud environments."
  

Google's Council Bluffs Data Center - Phase 2

The Omaha Newstand reports that wheels are in motion to provide the infrastructure for phase 2 of the Google data center in Council Bluffs Iowa. The city council is meeting to consider the resolutions for the creation of a utilities corridor south of the city. Phase 1 of the $600 Million Google data center is on 55 acres of land, where phase 2 is a 1,000 acre parcel, providing greater security for the buildings.

Check out the article here

Terremark's NAP of the Capital Region Set To Open

The Culpeper Virginia NAP of the Capital Region is set to open June 25th. A local newspaper had a brief article about the invitation-only opening and the fact that Norm Laudermilch, who Rich Miller interviewed a short while back, will continue on as the Managing Director of the 35-acre campus.

The same newspaper had an article about the importance of the Terremark project, taxpayer obligations, and a complex private-public proposal for Culpeper Utility Partners. The article is an interesting read and is another case study in the efforts of economic development departments doing their best to attract high technology business to the area. The massive Terremark of the Capital Region was definitely a catalyst for the area.

Terremark stock has been going down in the latter half of June, but between this NAP opening and their enterprise cloud offering, I would venture that it will pick back up.

Busy Week Ahead

As Rich Miller pointed out -- there are a lot of events happening this week worth tracking. He points out the O'Reilly Velocity conference, Giga Om's Structure conference on Cloud Computing, and the Data Center Energy Summit.

The Energy Summit sounds like a really cool conference and I'll watch that site for all of the information that they will (hopefully) release. It has a lot of heavy hitters in the industry attending and I like "lessons learned" type conferences.

The other big conference that I will be tracking this week is Cisco Live! in Orlando. Cisco Live has been their IT and communications conference many years and now also incorporates Cisco Networkers as a part of it.

Finally - the St. Louis Cardinals (should) sweep Boston today, and then need a really good week and a half or so before they face the Cubs on the July 4th weekend.

Thursday Links

I thought I would catch up on some of the surfing I have been doing this week and share some of what I have found. The Iowa flood victims are moving into clean-up mode and President Bush was in Iowa today to tour. Here are some things I have been reading lately:

• Greg Ness (VP at Bluelane) has a couple of excellent articles I enjoyed. The first one is "Data Center Security - 5 Critical Requirements", and the second is "Clouds - Clear Skies for Data Center Virtualization?".

• I think I had run across the following link a while back, but forgot about it. On the side I dabble a little in search engine optimization techniques, and the Google Data Center Research Tool is kind of fun. As my friend Ben would point out about their site though.... "C-Class" does not refer to IP Space, only to a Mercedes-Benz. :)

• Chris Brogan has a nice article on "Five Tools I use to Listen".

• GigaOm's site Ostatic has a post on Eucalyptus - Open Source Infrastructure for Cloud Computing.

• ComputerWorld - IBM Hits a Home Run - Globabally Distributed Data Center Virtualization.

• Here is an interesting story about the CERN particle accelerator network and distribution of 15 petabytes that the project generates annually.

• As confirmation to my recent Systems Management news article about Data Center staffing -- NY Times: "Demand for Data Puts Engineers in Spotlight". I would also remind people about Data Center University training and certification. I have been doing the online courses and feel they are excellent.

• I've been playing around with Summize a little more recently. I think this is a pretty cool little tool that has potential to be really useful. It basically searches twitter posts in real time, shows search term trends, and allows you to RSS your search.

Data Center Staffing

My latest column over at Systems Management News is out. In this column I discuss data center staffing needs and trends.

There is also an excellent article by Michelle Savage on Cloud Computing as well.

Iowa Floods of 2008

I haven't posted here in a while -- I have been incredibly busy with the Iowa Floods. Where I live and work are both high and dry and did not experience any flooding or related problems. I have heard some incredible stories and seen amazing pictures of the floods and this will definitely be one to talk about for years to come. Here are some links to news or pictures about the flood:

• Picasa Photo Album
• Another photo album
• Cedar Rapids Gazette Aerial photos
• CNN News Story
• Iowa Under Water - a new blog to chronicle the events

From a data center perspective, I wanted to cover two areas. The first is how flooding affects site selection. In the white paper I wrote last year about data center site selection, I included a map of Presidential Disaster Declarations. In this map, every single FEMA region lists flood as a type of natural disaster that can occur. It is a pretty amazing force of nature, and hard to avoid most anywhere you go in the U.S. Even if your state or region of the country doesn't flood much, there are plenty of other natural disasters to go around. The interesting correlation that I have made in site selection factors is that between natural disasters and quality of life. There were a lot of stories on the news and in the newspaper of people helping each other out, volunteering to sandbag the downtown and save businesses, and just an overall impressive level of community involvement. Avoiding natural disasters is one thing, locating where the people pull together in the event of a natural disaster is something else all together.

The other item on my mind throughout the floods is disaster recovery (DR) plans and business continuity. I can't mention company specifics for obvious reasons, but I have seen a lot of companies executing their disaster recovery plans as a result of the floods and have learned a lot from it. I have witnessed disaster plans carried out almost exactly as planned, but have also seen companies that did not have much planning in place at all (especially as it relates to their IT equipment). Again, the impressive part of both good and bad DR plan execution is the level of involvement and willingness to do what ever it takes from the people involved.

I 'think' the worst of the flooding is over - and I don't want this to turn into a Flood update blog, but I thought I would share my lessons learned from what has turned out to be a pretty amazing past week.

BastionHost Debuts Dataville

I ran across an interesting company tonight - and upon further reading on their site discovered that they offer what I have envisioned ever since I read about containers. I work in the colo industry and although the vision is a bit cloudy (pun intended), I think there is a colo play for containers.

Check out Bastionhost - a Canadian company that offers Dataville - a "secure closed system campus of data centers, ideally situated on the Great Circle route between New York City and London." They offer a number of services, have a pretty experienced management team and advisors, and claim to offer protection from "the prying eyes of big brother, while meeting the stringent standards of the European Union." On top of that - their web site has a cool spinning globe (lower right corner) -- yes I was into the animated GIFs in the late 90's. :)

The most interesting part (to me) was what they call Hot Parking. It looks as though they offer the Sun and Rackable container systems, and then give you the sheltered, conditioned environment in which to run it. These "mini modules" can be returned to BastionHost to be serviced, upgraded, or provisioned elsewhere in the world where it may be needed. I think this is an extremely cool idea --- it might take a bit to catch on, but knowing what I do of the containers, knowing the efficiencies and setup speed they offer, I think there is some huge potential for customers and colo's alike.

The company is based in Halifax, Canada; which I admit, I had to look up in Google Maps. If I had Google Maps and Google Earth when I took 8th grade geography I know I wouldn't have been as bad at it as I am now.

Containerized Data Center Marketing Growing

Byte & Switch has an article about containerized data centers boosting cloud computing. The article talks about a growing market, with offerings from Sun, Rackable, and Verari. They report that Rackable is gearing up orders in the second half of this year for containers "intended for Yahoo or perhaps Amazon".

"There are power claims, too: Verari's Forest Container requires 400,000 watts, which the vendor says is 110 percent more efficient than regular data centers."

I know in past posts I have started to really come around to the container model -- but I still struggle with it. Unless it is in a situation like Microsoft is using them, I really don't get how it is secure or is safe against natural disasters or other threats. If I can ever get some free time I want to build a matrix comparison of the containers and 'try' to do an apples to apples comparison.

Check out the Byte & Switch article here.

Cloud Computing - Part 2

My latest column in System Management News is out. My last column started a discussion on Cloud Computing, and there simply wasn't enough room to print it all. Part 2 is in this column and it focuses a little more on how clouds will (potentially) affect the enterprise.

Check out my article here (and many other excellent articles there as well!)

Enterasys Scales Intrusion Dection and Prevention

Enterasys Networks is an interesting company that has been in the news a lot lately. They are an spin-off of Cabletron Systems that formed in 2000. The press release that caught my eye was today....but here is a run-down of news:

• June 2: Enterasys scales Dragon Intrusion Detection and Prevention. IDS and IPS technologies are pretty amazing - and to be doing it at a 10Gigabit performance is even more amazing. I worked pretty closely with Palisade Systems IDS/IPS a number of years ago and really liked the technology.
  

  “Enterasys Dragon delivers fully distributed protection from both internal and external threats without having to deploy appliances on every wire,” said Mike Fabiaschi, Enterasys President and CEO. “Rather than just telling you that a threat exists – we make it easy to immediately remove the threat from any multi-vendor network without impacting performance.”

• Extreme wins patent suit against Enterays.

• Power and Cooling: Cisco vs. Enterasys. Although the numbers show Enterasys requiring approximately half the power and cooling of Cisco equipment, the numbers are baseless (i.e.: 70% of all statistics are made up). The comments after the article are interesting / comical to read. Like I said, 80% of all statistics are made-up.

• Enterasys closer to big buy? This article was on April 30th, but I haven't seen any news of an acquisition yet.
  

• March 31: Gartner places Enterasys in the Visonaries quadrant of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Campus LAN (Global).

Sun Microsystems Project Hydrazine

Maybe I'm still hyped-up on the talk from Brian Wilson at Sun, but Project Hydrazine is pretty cool.

Brian talked about a needs pyramid of the different parts of Information Technology. It was an interesting analysis, and (of course), Sun provided solutions at many of the steps up the pyramid. An article I read tonight really kind of brought it home for what Sun is offering. I've slowly come back to really like Sun as a company and where they are going. Their entry into the cloud computing arena is a pretty formidable one and worth a look.

Project Hydrazine was announced recently and packages a lot of things together to make an attractive solution. Check out this article from Talkbie or the Sun project page here.

On-Stage Telepresence

Cisco telepresence is some seriously cool stuff. Well, they kicked it up a notch recently by demonstrating on-stage telepresence. I'll link to the video - but it essentially reminds me of R2D2 beaming princess lea to deliver a message. :)

John Chambers was in Bangalore, India and brought on stage with him (virtually) Martin De Beer and Chuck Stucki, from San Jose. The demo apparently uses a presentation system from Musion, who does 3D holographic projection.

Check out the video here

Tuesday Links

Just a random collection of links I have come across today (mostly from surfing digg.com)

• Gates, Jobs and Woz - historical perspective slideshow on the Science Channel. BTW-- If anyone would like to buy an Apple IIGS Woz limited edition, let me know.
• 56 types of geeks :)
• Extravagant designs by Luigi Colani
• Did anyone else notice Google Maps now has a "more" button that turns on layers for photos and Wikipedia?

• Maybe Norway will be the next hot spot for Data Centers.... Here is an interesting article on their sea-based wind parks. The photo above comes from Panoramio, within a Google Maps search of Norway.

• Although there is not much new, the Economist has a nice article -- "Down on the Server Farm"
  
• Dell had a really good blog post last week on cloud computing: "Within Layer 1 - Power"
  
• As a follow-up to my post on Sun last week - I also listened to a podcast interview of Jonathan Schwartz on Giga Om.
• Here is a preview of Windows 7 and Multi-touch
  

I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day Weekend!

Uber Data Center in Vegas

I ran out of super-cool descriptive terms I could call this data center. They are already calling their new facility the SuperNAP (look out Terremark! :) ) The Register has an awesome article on Switch Communications -- a previously stealth colocation facility in Las Vegas, NV. Switch's CEO Rob Roy does what the CEO position is supposed to - overhype the capabilities and specs of the data center. He goes so far as to say that they are better than the mega-super-data centers that are being built by Microsoft and Google.

I won't go into too many details -- the Register article is very thorough and good read. I will say that the "disaster avoidance" maps on the Switch site are a little questionable (In my opinion).

Check out the article here
and the Switch web site here

Tracking and Managing Data Center Energy

I ran across two new tools tonight to help manage and track energy in the data center. On Monday IBM announced Energy Management software that is backed by nine big players.

"IBM is combining the new energy management software with partner solutions to provide customers with a comprehensive view of energy consumption across the enterprise -- not just in data centers but also in non-IT assets such as air conditioning equipment, power distribution units, lighting, and security systems."

Check out the CNN Money article here

Yesterday Federal Computer Week reported that the Department of Energy will soon unveil new tools to help data centers track total energy consumption. The data center Energy Profiler software suite will help calculate how energy is being used and identify potential cost savings.

Check out the FCW article here

Microsoft Data Center Construction Pictures

CRN Channel Web has a nice slide show that gives a peek into construction on Microsoft Data Centers. Facilities shown include Northlake (Chicago) and Dublin Ireland.

Check out the slide show here

This week in Storage 05.22.08

There was a lot of news in the storage industry this week. Here are just some of the items coming across my screen:

• Reldata offers a DR solution for Fiber Channel SAN. It "replicates FC SAN data to a remote IP SAN without disrupting existing production environment". The Reldata 9240 Unified Storage Gateway can be used for either local or WAN replication. I plan to do some posts on WAN replication, WAN optimization, WAN accelerators, etc.... in the near future. I think the whole cloud computing movement will accelerate this market pretty fast.

• Content storage software provider Caringo has a couple of new press releases: Their CAStor software was selected by CMWare to be the primary storage solution behind skyTuneZ. They also have a brief interview that talks about Caringo taking on IBRIX and Isilon.

• Web2Storage Corporation announced the general availability of its Web2Drive software. Their software allows "Windows Vista users secure, remote, and seemingly local access to their data at home or from anywhere with Internet access."

• EMC World was this week -- lots of press here surrounding new backup offerings.

• Rumors of a Cisco - EMC merger? Hmmmmm.... no comment (for now)

TEAM Companies - Madison Construction Update

TEAM Companies has posted some construction pictures of their data center being built in Madison, Wisconsin. The facility is set to open in the second quarter of 2008. TEAM provides planning, design and build services as well as co location. The Madison location was announced last September and will be 60,000 square feet, built in 20,000 sq.ft phases.

Check out the pictures here

Power Grid Vulnerability

Back in January there was some news surrounding the issues surrounding network vulnerabilities of the nations power grid operators. Pretty scary stuff considering the implications. According to a Network World article today, the Tennesee Valley Authority (TVA) apparently still doesn't get it. A GOA (Government Accountability Office) report laid out 73 recommendations for TVA to improve its security. The report and recommendations seem to apply across the board to electric companies; the focus on the TVA is probably just because they are the largest, serving an area with 8.7 million people.

Check out the article here.

Sun Blackbox Tour 2008

Earlier today I attended a meeting / event for Sun Microsystems. The Blackbox (S20) was back in Des Moines and although I saw it last year, I was curious to see it again. I'll get to the blackbox in a minute. The guest speaker for this year's event was Brian Wilson, Sun's Director and CTO - Market Development. He was an awesome speaker and I came out of his presentation inspired, with 3 pages of notes.

Brian started by briefly explaining how Sun has transformed over the past few years. Scott McNealy was a good CEO, but Jonathan Schwartz defintely shook things up when he took the healm. Jonathan promotes a new "transparency" for Sun and their interactions with customers and the industry. Sun has also become very 'agnostic' in its hardware and software platforms. Brian noted that Sun is actually more of a software company now than hardware. The challenge that Jonathan and Brian are presented with is... "how can Sun stay in business when customers can do more with less". Rather than give a typical marketing answer to this question, he went into the Sun answer with an overhead projector drawing. For those younger folks reading this -- here is the Wiki article on what an overhead projector is. :) I won't try to replicate Brian's drawing, but the thrust of it is that the focus is moving away from the enterprise where "IT=cost", and over to the service providers where "IT=weapon". The three drivers for this change in focus are the Internet, High Performance Computing, and the SaaS providers.

Some other notes or quotes I had from his talk:

• AT&T (who has a large Sun footprint), spends over $1 Billion per year for power.

• Book recommendation -- Empires of Light ( a favorite of Jonathan Schwartz also)
  

• Sun opened their Santa Clara data center and Brian took a tour. He was very impressed, talked with his tour guide and ended up finding out that those involved with the design and build of the data center ended up reporting to the Sun CFO. This was particularly interesting to Brian -- let the person in charge of paying the bills for the data center drive the build (and efficiency) of it!

• Blackbox: 25kW per rack, in 1/8 the space

• "Some" business do actually want to move their data centers -- examples being the U.S. Military and media companies covering Olympic events for periods in other countries.

• Sun entered the data center switch business. Internal code name Magnum. This is the big dog. It is an Infiniband core switch, with capacity for 3,456 server nodes and does a lot for switch consolidation and thus reduction/elimination of space and cabling.

• Best kept secret : TCP offload engine .....interesting stuff.
  

• Brian noted a database shift (in parallel with earlier statements about IT=cost vs. IT=weapon. 90% of enterprise databases are Oracle, while 90% of web 2.0 databases are mySQL

• Sun does NOT use raised floor in their data centers.

• They feel it is their corporate responsibility to share data center design knowledge and lessons learned with the industry.

• 3 take-aways: 1) Sun hardware runs on other vendors chips (Intel/AMD). 2) They push extreme efficiency. 3) Build a digital service delivery platform (i.e.: LAMP , SAMP , or MARS (mySQL, Apache, Ruby, Solaris) )
  

Ok -- now on to the Blackbox: Unfortunately, Sun did not send the latest version of the S20 to Des Moines. The container was essentially what I saw last year. The two notable differences in the product were that they have added a fire suppression system to it, and this time they had a Sun branded Chiller unit sitting on the truck in front of the Blackbox. Other changes include better cable management and the ability to move an entire cabinet (easily) in and out of the container. They state that you can place anyone's hardware inside the container and there are configuration alternatives you can take; for instance, adding fewer, but deeper cabinets to accommodate special equipment that needs the depth. It was overheard that there are 8 Blackboxes in production today, but the pipeline of interested parties is pretty large. The United Airline story about putting containers in their hangers in Chicago was mentioned a few times.

Overall I am glad I attended the event and I think the whole container story is starting to really sink in with me. I by no means think it is "the" answer, but there are some very plausible scenarios where it can be used and I think Sun entered the game pretty early and as such has a good chance at succeeding. Here are some pictures I took of the Blackbox.

Utility Computing.....Myth?

Myth? I don't think so. I think it is the early stages, but definitely not a myth. This post by Richard Ziade, at the basement.org blog contends that utility computing is not the end of traditional software. He has a pretty funny statement -- "I don't need a multi-billion dollar data center in North Carolina to re-size an image". I don't think utility computing, cloud computing, grid computing -- what ever you want to call it is a myth. Far from it. The applications of these technologies will be seen in different places, for different reasons and at different paces over the coming years. The related space I'm watching is networking and wide-area networking (i.e.: wan accelerators / optimizers, metro ethernet, FTTP, and so forth). FYI - Worldwide Metro Ethernet sales hit $13 Billion in 2007, up 27%. Richards post and subsequent comments are an interesting read though.

Richard's joke about re-sizing an image did (for whatever reason) make me think about a really compute-intensive application (locally and in the cloud) that I simply love. Google Earth. I think I'll start my 12-step program tonight: Hello, my name is John Rath, and I am a Google Earth addict. I simply can't get enough of this program. If any Google Earth developers are reading and need someone to get them Mountain Dew or wash their car, I'm your man. :) I found a video tonight that will explain some of the amazing new features that they have added, if you haven't seen it lately. Check out the video (no, really) here.

One other post on basement.org piqued my interest on "visual browsing". As someone who recently purchased an Ipod Touch and is a BIG fan of visual browsing, the software Richard writes about, PicLens is ... (pardon my Paris Hilton) ....HOT!

Giga Om's Structure 08

Just a quick link to a conference I ran across tonight that looks really cool. Giga Om's Structure 08 will be in San Francisco June 28th, and the speaker line-up is pretty amazing. I would especially like to see Debra Chrapaty (Microsoft), Werner Vogels (Amazon), and Greg Popadopoulos (Sun).

The tag line is "Put Cloud Computing to Work". Check out conference details here

Head in the Clouds

Just a quick link to my latest article over at Systems Management News. I decided there simply was not enough coverage about cloud computing in the press (ha ha) -- and that I needed to put my two cents in.

In the end, I could have written 10x what I did on the topic. There are really a lot of different facets to it and angles to take on what impact cloud computing will really have. I will have a part 2 to the article next and will perhaps write some more on the topic here.

I received my print copy to Systems Management News last night and really enjoy it. For anyone who has not checked it out, take a peek!

Check out my article here

Data Centers in Iowa

There were a couple of stories recently re-affirming that Iowa is an awesome place to build a data center. Data Center Knowledge reported about this years series of Boyd Company rankings. Three Iowa cities (Council Bluffs, Ames and Des Moines) made the top 10 list for "most affordable markets". TEAM Companies has capitalized on the data center market in Iowa, and Peak 10 is growing rapidly in North Carolina, which had 2 cities in the top 10.

Today, Emerson subsidiary Emerson Process Management, announced plans to build a $12 million data center in Marshalltown, Iowa. This data center will be primarily to backup Emerson operations and development across the globe. They also announced that a new primary data center would be built for the company in St. Louis.

"Akason said Marshalltown stood against competition for the project from metropolitan areas like Minneapolis-St. Paul; Cincinnati; Columbus, Ohio; Chicago and Emerson’s headquarters, St. Louis"

Check out the Times-Republican article here

Terremark in the News

Terremark has been in the news again recently. On Friday, APCON (maker of matrix switches) announced that Terremark had purchased a 20 switch license of TITAN software for managing APCON switches.

Earlier this morning Cisco announced that Terremark's Infinistructure (TM) Utility Computing platform is using the Cisco Internet Protocol Next-Generation Network (IP NGN) architecture.

"Terremark's Infinistructure platform is a true utility-computing solution designed to solve both the economic and capacity-on-demand shortcomings of traditional infrastructure. Infinistructure's enterprise-class server and storage infrastructure combines Terremark's proprietary digitalOps® service-management platform with leading-edge virtualization technology from Cisco and other companies, providing a highly scalable and flexible high-performance computing platform."

Terremark's NAP of the Americas facilities use a wide range of Cisco products, from ASA's to Catalyst 6500's, and MDS switches.
Check out the CNN Money article here
and the Cisco press release here


I have started to watch Terrermark a little closer over the last few years. I almost forgot that they acquired Data Return this time last year. They placed in the 2008 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Hosting and the report had some very positive things to say about them. For instance, they are known for their well engineered solutions and support. I still get a kick out of their Capital Region NAP having DoD-trained anti-terrorism personnel on staff. I think that is the course I need to attend so I can have it on my resume. :)

Wednesday Links

• The Motley Fool lists Savvis stock as the "worst", in last Wednesday's "Worst Stocks in the World". Ouch

• Andy Kessler has the dream interview -- Woz! Andy has a series of videos on Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple, and all-around genius. If anyone is interested in buying my Apple IIGS Woz Limited Edition, let me know.

New EMC Network Management Tool

Here is one I'm going to have to read up on in the near future. EMC continues to grow into new business lines, with the announcement of the release of Voyence Control 4.0. EMC acquired Voyence last October.

"Some other features in the release include an Extensible Hybrid Model-Based Approach, which EMC said aligns with the model-based management capabilities of Smarts and EMC Application Discovery Manager (ADM). You might say that's code for ensuring it works with with other vendor products, especially Cisco's network products"

Check out the article at InternetNews.com here
and the EMC press release here

We'll have to wait until Chuck Hollis from EMC is back from traveling, to hear his thoughts.

What $10.9 Billion Will Buy

A particular Digg caught my eye today -- "Exxon posts a $10.9 Billion Profit." For myself, and other mere mortals, $10.9B is just plain hard to even fathom. So, I thought I would do some of the fun math that I have seen others do that kind of puts it all in perspective.

Here is a break-down of what exactly $10.9 Billion means:

• It's slightly more than the 2007 Gross Domestic Product of Japan, Germany and China...... Combined!!
• It could buy 2.7 exabytes of enterprise-grade storage (roughly -- at somewhere around $4/GB). This is approximately .002% of the 1.7 zettabytes that IDC forecasts we'll be generating in 2011.
• Instead of building data centers for the company, you could just buy Equinix, Level 3, and Digital Realty Trust. (based on Market Cap)
  
• $10.9B is more than 4x the 2007 "net investments in real estate" made by Digital Realty Trust.
• It's more than 3x the total amount Cisco spent in acquisitions in 2007.
  
• It's more than 4x what Google spent on data centers in 2007.
• It's only 6% of the Google Market Cap.
• Google Gross Profit is catching up -- at $9.9B
• It would buy around 83,846 shares of Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock

Microsoft Withdraws Yahoo Bid

I haven't commented much on the Microsoft/Yahoo saga....I figure there isn't much need for yet another story on it. :)
But.....since I am surfing right now and happened to read it -- it looks like the deal is off.

I think this perhaps proves that what ever John Dvorak says will happen....take bets on the opposite! :)

It will be interesting to see what happens with Yahoo over the next few months as the reorganize, and maybe re-think strategies and partnerships.

Check out the press release here
and Tech Crunch article here

FastServers Acquisition Article

MidwestBusiness has a follow-up article to the FastServers acquisition by Layered Tech. The article mentions a potential $15 million purchase price and that owners Ian and Travis are free to move on to other ventures after a 60 day consulting agreement expires. Hey Ian and Travis, I really think you need to buy a Lamborghini -- and more specifically, come let me drive it! :)

Check out the Midwest Business article here.

NOTE: Because of my Iowa-bias, I must note that the article incorrectly states "Cedar Rapids" data center --- it is really Cedar Falls data center.

This Week in Storage

Here are some recent items I found on the net about the storage market:

Because the storage market needed just 'one' more acronym.... Seanodes brings us SIS (Shared Internal Storage). It is an interesting concept - it converts unused internal disks and arrays inside of systems into a shared storage array. The idea is that data de-duplication is great, but it is a post-processing activity; where SIS is leveraging 100% of unused or underused disk capacity. "Shared Internal Storage takes advantage of what IDC calls an "inside-out SAN" by virtualizing internal storage assets and servers across a shared storage pool of clustered nodes." Seanodes was founded in France in 2002, but has since opened a Cambridge, Mass. office and was noted (last November) to be looking for partners for their solutions and software. Check out a VAR Business article here, and the Seanodes site here.

IBM revealed "Cloud Storage Services" this week, as a follow-up to its acquisition of Arsenal Digital Solutions in December 2007. It brings a storage service offering to the small and medium size business, something that Arsenal brought 3,400 of to IBM in the merger. Check out the eWeek article here.

StorageMojo has an article on the notebook flash SSD market.

Tony Pearson, over at the Inside System Storage blog at IBM, comments on the recent Forrester Research finding titled "Consolidate Storage Vendors To Reduce Complexity"

Network Congestion

I wish someone would hurry up and invent the Star Trek teleporter. :) I would like to be at work, in Vegas (Interop), and in Dallas (Broadband Properties Summit) all at once. Check out the Best of Interop Finalists here.

I was reading James Carlini today, at MidwestBusiness.com, and he had an interesting article that pointed me to the BroadBand Properties Summit '08. James is delivering a keynote at the event and previewed his speech with the article "AT&T: Will World Butt Up Against Internet’s Physical Capacity By 2010?". It is a good article and worth the read. It also reminded me of a good podcast I finished recently that I wanted to link to. Listen to Security Now, episode 139 - Network Congestion.

More on Interop as the week progresses -- the 'best of' finalists are some interesting companies worth researching.

IT Olympics

This weekend I participated in a really cool event. I volunteered to be a mentor for the IT-Olympics in Ames, Iowa. The IT Olympics is a competition among 25 high schools across Iowa, that compete in 3 venues: Game Design, Robotics and Cyber Defense. It is a really cool way to get young kids excited about IT and enforce the need to promote IT, IT as a career choice, and let kids demonstrate their talent. I attempted to help the Cyber Defense team for the high school I was helping and they did a GREAT job. There is a documented scenario and limited architecture that the kids put together and then on competition day, the "red" team, a group of event hackers, are let loose to try and penetrate the computers run by the high school. All of the kids setup systems yesterday and then had to fend off the hackers from 8-4 today (closed/controlled environment).

Details of the event can be found on the IT-Adventures website here. If anyone would like further details please let me know.

It was a really fun event that I just wanted to give a quick mention to in hopes of promoting the idea and giving credit to all of those involved in the event. Congratulations to the team I helped, and all for all off their hard work, long hours, and dedication.

New VISI Data Center in Duluth

Minnesota managed hosting and connectivity company VISI has announced a tier 3 $18 - $19 Million data center to be built in Duluth, Minnesota. The 50,000 square foot facility will be built to Tier III standards and will also be SAS70 type 2 compliant. Showing the power of local partnerships, demand of the data center was researched by partnering with the Minnesota Power and Area Partnership for Economic Expansion.

Check out the press release here


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