Cisco and Duke Energy Partner for Smart Grid Development

Cisco and Duke Energy announced a partnership today to fast-track the development of Duke Energy's smart grid. Duke serves 11 million people over 5 states and later this year will launch a five year mass deployment of smart grid technology.

"Cisco, working closely with Duke Energy, will develop a highly refined, end-to-end, smart grid communications architecture – one that both companies believe will be among the most comprehensive and interoperable in the electric utility industry."

Check out the press release here.

New Cisco Data Center For Allen, Texas

Cisco announced today that they will build a 140,000 - 160,000 square foot data center in Allen, Texas. The facility is reported to cost $500 Million, employ 100 people and (wait for it....) Cisco will receive tax incentives. Cisco stock closed up 1.06% today at $20.08

The Allen Economic Development Corporation has a nice report on the the Data Center proposal for the Stacy Road location that Cisco is most likely building on. Good power, fiber connectivity and financial incentives = data center site selection. The local utility for this area, Oncor announced last week that the "World's largest concentration of smart grid voltage compensation equipment placed in service by Oncor".

Allen Texas is about 25 miles north of downtown Dallas. There is also a sizable Cingular data center just a little bit south of the Cisco site in Allen.

Check out the press release here

Here is a map of the Allen, Texas data center site

View Larger Map

Qwest Nixes Plans To Sell Long-Haul Network

At an estimated value of around $4 Billion Qwest announced today confirming that they will not be selling their long-haul network. I have to agree with the Telecom Ramblings blog in that this was just a trial and if they didn't like the bids today, it won't stop them from reconsidering an offer later in the year.

Check out the Qwest Press Release here

There is a nice history lesson of the 1984 AT&T break-up and the resulting baby bells on the Wikinvest site.

Flash Player 9 or higher is required to view the chart
Click here to download Flash Player now

View the full NYSE:Q chart at Wikinvest

Northern Indiana - Latest High-Tech Hub

Like I was saying in my last post -- the data center news is getting predictable:

____insert city name here____ is poised to become a high-tech hub, thanks to a change in state law that allows __________.

This time around: Northern Inidana, where they have passed a law that allows for personal property tax exemptions on data center equipment. The announcement is complete with benefits for Metronet, a quote from EYP Critical Facilities Servcies, and a the Senator who authored the bill.

Colocation and managed service provider Gramtel is located in South Bend, Indiana. Gramtel was acquired by Cincinnati Bell in January 2008.

It just shows how the data center industry continues to be a hot business and states are foaming at the mouth to get that business to locate in their state.

Check out the press release here.

I meant to mention this a few weeks back, but if you haven't checked out datacentermap.com lately ......CHECK it out! Sune has been busy on this site and the additions (since the last time I had seen it) are really cool. There are data center profiles, maps, tenants, connectivity and more!

North Carolina Passes Tax Code for Apple

Get ready for the shocking news... :) NC House passes tax code that could bring Apple data center. It seems like these mega data center announcements are pretty cookie-cutter as far as 'how' the deal goes down. Months and months of stealth mode, a "leak" of information, tax breaks written for data center "companies" and so on. The funny thing in this arstechnica article is that "the bill isn't tied to any particular company" and then a little later... "those conditions include investing $1 Billion dollars". :)

The Cliff Notes:

1. $1 Billion data center
2. 100 full time staff members initially
3. up to $46 Million in tax credits over the next 10 years
4. could save Apple $300 Million if the company operated the data center for 30 years

Check out the article here.

i/o Data Centers To Offer ICE Cube Modular Data Center

I have followed i/o Data Centers for a while now. Today I ran across a press release that furthers my theory about containers and the colocation market, as well as supporting the overall container momentum.

SGI / Rackable announced that it recently shipped its ICE Cube modular data center to i/o Data Centers to address clients' evolving data center needs. The press release is about 95% marketing and specs on the ICE Cube, so I have to wonder what exactly i/o is going to do with the containers other than 'offer' them to customers. Still -- I applaud them for embracing it and making it a product offering.

Last month CRG West announced it was offering Verari Systems FOREST containers to its customers.

Data Center Stock Market News

Just a couple of items I noticed today in regards to the data center stocks I monitor. First, is an update to the data center stock index I started last year. It has been a roller coaster -- here is the latest graph:

More details on what the index is comprised of can be found here.

The Dow Jones Internet Composite Index has also been graphing quite nicely the last 3 months.

The second story was one I some how missed last week -- Wachovia resumed coverage of the data center space. They immediately rated Equinix and Switch & Data with OUTPERFORM.

"Both companies have high visibility into its revenue base and low churn driven by 1 – 3+ year contracts with escalators. EQIX, SDXC, and other network neutral data centers benefit from a supply demand imbalance due to growth in IP and internet traffic and limited available space close to fiber hubs for telecom equipment and networking gear"

Also late last week submarine transport cable provider Hibernia announced they have expanded into Equinix's LD4 London Slough IBX data center.

Earlier today Datacenterknowledge reported on VMWare taking a 5% stake in Terremark. In terms of institutional ownership, that puts them in 2nd place, behind Ashford Capital Management, who has a 7.98% stake. I thought the comment on the BusinessWeek investing site was interesting:

"There is significant interest in TMRK by institutional investors. The 29.13% of the shares outstanding that they control represents a greater percentage of ownership than at almost any other company in the Specialty Telecommunications industry."

Data Center Degrees

Nope -- not a blog post about temperatures and cooling in the data center -- this time I'm talking about educational degrees. ITJungle.com reports on Metropolitan Community College (MCC), in Omaha reinventing its General IT curriculum. They are adding specialized course work realting to the IBM Power Systems i Platform - and launching a two-year educational track called Data Center Management. With Yahoo, Google and Microsoft all in their back yard - combined with online courses, MCC should have a lot of demand for these courses.

"MCC received a three-year $1.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor with the goal of increasing the number of students in IT education. Building and developing the data center and the management is part of the grant."

Check out the IT Jungle article here

Last week the Wall Street Journal had an article about "Google Searches for Staffing Answers". It discussed Google HR and their approach to solving the brain drain problem. What better or more appropriate way for them to solve it, than with an algorithm. Check out the interesting article here.

Fremont, NE Data Center Study

Apparently Freemont, Nebraska lost out on a bid for a Yahoo data center.  A study was then done to determine whether Fremont was a suitable location for a data center.  The study findings show a spot on the north edge of town that would be idea.  The main selling point for the city is power -- 30 megawatts.  While it may not have been enough for Yahoo, they point out it is perfect for the smaller, Enterprise data centers.

Fremont is about 35 miles north-west of Omaha.

Check out the Fremont Tribune article here

Yahoo Data Center Planned for New York

It looks like Yahoo is planning another mega data center, this time in Western New York.  The Wall Street Journal reports that state officials are working with Yahoo to establish the new data center and that the Governor asked the Power Authority to come up with low-cost power (which is why I was suprised to hear the news in the first place).

Late last month Yahoo reported a strong balance sheet with $3.7 Billion in cash and marketable debt.  

Check out the article here

Insert Catchy Cloud Computing Title Here

For the most part I stay away from articles or links about cloud computing -- it's just too crowded right now and I have too much to read, let alone write about.  I have, however run across several good links lately that I wanted to share:

Many sites and blogs have coverered the move from Microsoft to Digital Realty Trust for Michael Manos.  I thought the May 5th post on his blog - Forecast Cloudy with Continued Enterprise - was particularly good.  The beginning reminded me of reading Nicholas Carr's The Big Switch: an excellent book.  I think Digital Realty Trust will be an excellent fit for Michael and thank him for generously sharing his wisdom in his blog.

Also on Cinco de Mayo was a post from Sam Johnston on "Is OCCI the HTTP of Cloud Computing?"  OCCI is the OGF's Open Cloud Computing Interface - who provides the interface to Cloud Infrastructure as a Service.  Has anyone asked Tim Berners-Lee about this yet?

Apparently Akamai, formerly a Content Delivery Network company, is now a Cloud Provider.  Ummm... ok

Google had a couple of notes on cloud computing recently.  Co-founder Sergey Brin posted the 2008 Founders' Letter on the Google blog, and discussed cloud computing.  CEO Eric Schmidt, at a press event, dismissed Android questions in favor of talking about the cloud, models and strategies.

Forrester Research recognized 3Tera's Applogic as the leading "cloud infrastructure software offering available today".

Wind Energy

For anyone that has read my blog for a while, you will know that I have a side interest in Wind Energy. Power and renewable energy sources are obviously huge issues for the data center industry and since I live in one of the top wind energy producing states, it has always been of interest to me. Tonight I read two lines from an article about a Berkshire Hathaway meeting that piqued my interest.

"Berkshire is investing heavily on wind energy, especially in Iowa. "We'll continue to be a leader" in wind power, Buffett said. They'll also invest in additional utility businesses."

Berkshire lists MidAmerican Energy Holdings, based in Des Moines, IA as a subsidiary company. MidAmerican has some large wind projects in Iowa. As much as wind power is picking up in popularity around the world, I have to wonder what projects (specifically) Bershire is investing in.

After reading the above quote I turned on the TV (Science Channel of course) and watched one of those "future world" type programs. One of the segments was on a huge wind farm in Denmark that was producing double-digit megawatts of electricity. I 'think' they were referring to the Middelgrunden Wind Turbine Co-operative, off the coast of Amager, Denmark. I of course proceeded straight to online maps and Google Earth to check it out.

• You can see the line of wind turbines from Google Earth / Maps
• Google Earth also noted a few Panoramio photos (here and here, and here)
  
• Microsoft Live Maps has a nice bird's eye view of the turbines

An October 2008 article at Treehugger has an aritcle on the wind farm - stating that it will have 207 Megawatts by 2010.

Exiting times for Wind power as a renewable energy!

UPDATE: Thanks Sune Christesen for a link to Offshore Wind Farms - complete with a Google Earth Placemark collection!

Intel's Green Power

I have run across several news items about Intel Inc. lately and thought I would share.  

The first was a ComputerWorld article last week about the EPA Study on energy saving opportunities in servers and data centers.  Intel has been working closely with the EPA to develop the new data center energy performance rating.  About a month ago Intel launched their 5500 series processors and their Data Center Efficiency Challenge.  

The second and third items were Forbes.com articles.  The first one I actually read about in an archaic media form called a....... "magazine".  :)    Luckly, there was an online version of the same thing.  This article discusses how Intel is spending $7 Billion (with a B) to downsize its chips.  I guess there are buildings more expensive than data centers to build!  The second article was discussing how well situated Intel is in the current recession.  $3.5 Billion in cash, $4.2 Billion in short-term securities, and a gross margin of 46%!

The fourth item is actually how I started this blog post -- The EPA announced their list of the largest green power purchasers in the U.S. and Intel ranked #1!  You can find the National Top 50 list here.  I also then checked out a 'provider' company that seemed to be used a lot by the top 50 companies - 3Degrees.  

Since I am a maps fanatic and like to look at Fortune 500 corporate campuses (from Google Maps) I had an urge to map the top 10 in the EPA's Green Power Purchasers list.  

View EPA National Top 50 in a larger map

Visualizing the Power Grid

When I did my site selection white paper I loved looking at various maps of the U.S. to depict a number of different things.  Tonight I ran across a new set of maps and very interesting information (link courtesy of my  brother-in-law).

NPR is running a series titled "Electricity in America".    This map, Visualizing the Grid, shows power lines, power plants, sources of power and other data overlays.  

Now....if only the overlays could have been Google Earth layers...  :)

Equinix Q1 Profit Triples at $15.5 Million

Equinix announced their first quarter 2009 results today. Proving that the demand for colocation and data center services is still high, they had some good numbers:

• Increased quarterly revenues to $199.2 million, a 4% increase over the previous quarter and 26% increase over the same quarter last year.
• "Capital expenditures in the first quarter were $75 million, of which $10.3 million was attributed to ongoing capital expenditures and $64.7 million was attributed to expansion capital expenditures"
• For the second quarter of 2009, Equinix expects revenues to be in the range of $206 to $210 million

On their Investors web page there is a spreadsheet full of "non-financial" metrics that I found pretty interesting. For example:

• "head count" is up 226 people from Q1 2008
• It's funny how colo customers are 'somewhat' seasonal. They had 160 new customers in Q1 2008 and 161 in Q1 2009
• 10 Gig Exchange ports has more than doubled in the past year
• "Managed infrastructure Services % of recurring revenue" has not budged a single percentage since Q1 2008.
  

There is also a fairly detailed '2007-2010 Announced Expansions' PDF here.

The Seeking Alpha blog had a nice post on Monday on Equinix and the colocations sector.

When searching around for Equinix today I ran across a pretty interesting article at Forbes.com. It was from December 2, 1999. It gives the historical perspective on just how far Equinix has come..... I still put Jay Adelson as one of my top "Tech People to Know" list. Here is a quote from that 1999 article:

"Equinix announced an impressive $280 million in financing today, including a $200 million debt offering by Salomon Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Goldman Sachs. The remaining $80 million came from its initial backers--Cisco Systems csco (nasdaq: csco - news - people), Microsoft msft (nasdaq: msft - news - people), and Benchmark Capital--as well as a slew of new and less likely investors like Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and E*Trade Group egrp (nasdaq: egrp - news - people). So far the company has raised just more than $315 million."

Equinix closed down today -0.19 at $62.26 -- but shares rose 2% in Wednesday's extended trading.

Flash Player 9 or higher is required to view the chart
Click here to download Flash Player now

View the full NASDAQ:EQIX chart at Wikinvest

HP POD, Servers and Factory Express

I found a couple of YouTube videos (link from Mauricio Freitas) that were pretty interesting.

First -- Mauricio has a few pictures from a HP Storage POD - filled with 22 racks, each containing 160TB of storage. Just park that in my back yard and I'll be good to go!

Also on his blog he has videos of the HP Factory Express:




and information about the re-architected HP Servers (pretty cool stuff here):

Iceland Data Center Market

Just a quick post about an interesting documentary video on the Iceland Data Center Market (link from the Green Data Center blog). I know there have been many skeptics about this area being good for data centers, but they certainly have a lot of things coming together recently that make a case for them.

Level3 Financing $220M Loan

"Level 3 Financing, Inc., has received commitments from lenders to increase the borrowings under its existing $1.4 billion senior secured credit facility through the creation of a $220 million Tranche B loan"

That quote was from the StreetInsider.com article on the Level3 announcement. The loan is reported to be used for "general corporate purposes". I'm a techie - so I had to Google what "general corporate purposes" meant. :) Apparently it means we're going to get a ton of money to do what we want with it and not tell anyone.

Rob Powell at the Telecom Ramblings blog had a pretty funny April fools post about CEO James Crowe moving his office to an undisclosed monastery deep in the Himalayas. Rob also suggests that the cash could be used for purchasing Qwest longhaul -- which makes sense to me.

Last Thursday Level3 announced some new wavelength service offerings for network protection, additional bandwidth options and performance guarantees.

Level3 has posted their Red Couch interviews, taken at SXSW last month - including one from Matt Tanase from Rackspace.

Below is a 6 month chart of LVLT from WikiInvest

Flash Player 9 or higher is required to view the chart
Click here to download Flash Player now

View the full NASDAQ:LVLT chart at Wikinvest

Xerox $100 million outsource deal to HCL Technologies

Xerox will pay $100 Million over six years for HCL Technologies to manage disaster recovery preparation and consolidate data centers across North America and Europe.

This article over on MarketWatch has the details and quite the discussion thread to follow.

Data Center Design

As I read the Pingdom article about "8 ways to make data centers less boring"....I recalled a TED talk I watched recently. The talk was from Don Norman, and I later learned that it was a speech from 2003! Anyway, it was a Really good talk and made me think about the overall design of a data center and how it makes you feel when seeing it.

I work in the colo industry, so we have to sell the data center as a product and after listening to Don Norman I can see how design, architecture and a number of other details effect how the data center is experienced by customers and employees alike.

Even the companies making data center containers today pay attention to the outside colors, layout of racks and shiny metal curves inside. Functionality, efficiency and cost will always trump .... because utlimately the data center has a sole purpose.....but why not put the little bit of effort into the principles that Don talks about and make it even better.

Check out Don's TED Talk here

P.S.: The 2008 talk from Mike Rowe (host of Dirty Jobs) is still by FAR the best one I have seen.

Monday Links - March 30, 2009

LOTS of news today, and not much time, so here you go.....


NYT: Rackable vows to outlast price war with Dell. Interesting story about Rackable and their history and strategy against Dell. I like Rackable....I don't think they are the right solution for 'everyone', but there is a lot of potential.

Rackable, along with Intel, Netapp and Akamai have probably bought a few steak dinners for Facebook executives lately. Data Center Knowledge reported today about them seeking up to $100 million to expand data centers. To compliment that post and the Businessweek article, I found these interesting:

• Niall Kennedy has a very nice write-up with an amazing amount of detail about Facebook operations, user stats and data centers.
• Fool.com also has a nice commentary about the TriplePoint Capital conversations and overall troubled state of banks with tech companies.

At the Intel Xeon 5500 launch today, Intel also announced a Data Center Efficiency challenge. It should be interesting to see what people submit for videos. Check out the Facebook page with contest rules and details here.

I can just feel the momentum going for container data centers.... and apparently CRG West gets it also. Data Center Knowledge reports on a partnership with CRG West and HP to deploy the HP POD container. Very cool stuff. Check out the press release here.

"Data Center Fabric" is fast becoming a big term for 2009. Juniper Networks outlined their vision and strategy today for the next generation data center fabric. David Yen's blog at Juniper also has some details on project 'Stratus' .... here.

"PFB Seeks 40 million pounds in Data Center Financing" . If my currency conversion is correct, that's about $57 million. Pinder Fry and Benjamin is a London-based real estate firm with an interesting data center investment portfolio. The Data Center Dynamics article states that "The company said this third round of funding would be used to invest in the sites to which it has already committed and new data center investments." The March 9 Offer Summary can be found here.

A magnitude 4.3 earthquake hit the bay area this morning -- about 16 miles east of San Jose. The interesting thing was that a new fault was discovered. No major damage was reported. Lots of tweets surrounded the event this morning as well. No news or impact on data centers that I have read about yet.

Check out the Phase 2 notes from Michael J. Morris on his data center project - with networking based on the Cisco Nexus-series line. It sounds like a very fun project

Finally -- this is an Iowa blog, so I have to say GO Gov. Culver Go! :) Governer Culver announced he had a positive, productive meeting with Microsoft today. The status of the West Des Moines data center hasn't changed, but at least it isn't cancelled. I am still SUPER curious to see if the Iowa facility will be the test bed for their 4th generation design.

5 days, 19 hours and 12 minutes until opening night of Baseball!!

GE 750kVA SG Series Digital Energy UPS

Yesterday GE Digital Energy (a division of General Electric) announced that its 750kVA SG Series Digital Energy UPS has been certified as an Ecoimagination product.

“As the IT industry’s demand for data storage grows significantly each year, so does the amount of energy needed to run servers and data centers,” said Larry Sollecito, President and CEO, GE Digital Energy. “GE’s investment in more energy efficient UPS technology helps data centers achieve a high level of energy efficiency without sacrificing high power capacity or reliability. A number of large data centers have already placed orders for the highly efficient 750kVA UPS.”

I'm going to have to look at this UPS a little closer. The press release touts some impressive cost savings figures.

Check out the press release here

and the product page here.

Monday Links

Just some quick links to things I found on the net today -- no time to comment; just things I found to be interesting.....

Check out the drawing in this IEEE Spectrum article. It looks like another approach to the Microsoft 4th Generation data center (outdoor container park)! The article is good also --- although it is kind of a summary of what has gone on the last 6-12 months....nothing new.

Power Grid Found Susceptible. I'm a big fan of SmartGrids, but like anything else they need to be EXTREMELY careful with this. Security firm IOActive is offering the security lesson....maybe a few rants from Christopher Hoff would help as well.

Just to show I'm not a complete Cisco fan-boy.... Force10 announced some big iron today. They unveiled a new line of switches and routers "designed to improve the performance, management and cost effectiveness of virtualized data center and cloud computing environments." Pretty cool stuff from an initial quick glance.

As many of you know, I blog from Iowa and simply can NOT escape the stupid stereotype about farmers. I've worked on a few IT projects in the past that were for, or benefited farmers, and so I thought this was interesting..... it's a map showing broadband in america -- percentage of farmers with high speed internet.

March 19 announcement from Rackable: "The CloudRack C2 servers can run at 104 degrees inside the data center, and they offload power supply to the rack to reduce energy wasted in converting AC electricity from the wall to DC electricity used by the box to 1 percent"

I'm usually on the same page as Om Malik.... but have to disagree with him on this one. He thinks Cisco should buy Sun, not IBM.

Peak 10 Unveils Tampa Bay Data Center

On Friday Charlotte based data center operator Peak 10 announced the opening of its second world-class data center, located in Tampa, Florida. The 15,400 square foot facility will bring their total footprint to more than 30,000 square feet.

"Like all Peak 10 facilities, the new Tampa data center is engineered with multiple levels of security, uninterruptible power, HVAC systems, fire suppression and around-the-clock monitoring and management. It is SAS70 Type II compliant and interconnected with Peak 10’s private network, which provides customers the advantage of highly available Internet access and the ability to leverage data centers in eight other markets in implementing disaster recovery solutions."

Check out the press release here.

Verari Article: "Greening the Internet"

Just a quick link to an article I liked about Verari Systems, maker of the FOREST data center container. It was on the Xconomy | San Diego site and is an interview with two execs from Verari. The article discusses gree technologis, efficiencies, financial aspects of containers and overall energy-saving approaches.

Check it out here.

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.

Data Center Stocks

Remember the part about the economy getting worse before it gets better? Well.... the data center stock index I started back in October continues to set new lows. Today's value was $16.41. I also started tracking 4 colocation companies in a separate index; Equinix, Terremark, Savvis and Switch and Data. Here are my Google Spreadsheet charts for those indexes:

DataCenter Stock Index


Colocation Stock Index




Forbes reported today that Google and Cisco are being eyed as possible Dow candidates. Cisco is getting almost as good as Apple at creating a buz on the net. Eweek reports that Cisco is planning to unveil a new data center strategy on March 16. Much of the speculation was about their new servers, potentially equipped with VMWare software.

"The company would not disclose details of the March 16 announcements on Monday, but a spokeswoman acknowledged that the event would be related to the
speculation. Chief Executive John Chambers and other Cisco executives will
unveil new technology and partnerships, Cisco said."

Speaking of creating a buzz.....I think this video at the Onion is perhaps the funniest one they have done in some time (and they do some funny stuff!).

Finally -- listen to the master investor for a good big picture on the economy and where we are going ; Warren Buffet talks on CNBC.

Updated Blogroll

Since most of my blog activity lately is 'reading' them instead of posting to my own, I thought I would update my blogroll. Check it out on the right column a little ways down ----->

I also wanted to say Happy Friday with a video (below) I found on Steve Clayton's blog.

Absolutely hilarious!!

Misc. Tech News - March 1, 2009

34 days and 20 hours left until the opening night of Major League Baseball!

Outside of the fun little newspaper generator mentioned above, I ran across a number of interesting stories this weekend....

• The Data Center Pulse Summit presentations and videos have been graciously posted on their site. There are a number of interesting things mentioned here. NetworkWorld also has a nice write-up of the Top 10 Industry Requests generated at the summit.

• Intel and Microsoft are flexing their muscle when it comes to innovation in the current recession. Microsoft recently had their annual TechFest event to showcase what Microsoft Research had been up to. Slide 13 shows the low powered processors we all heard about recently. Intel Research Laboratories have also been up to quite a bit lately. Wireless Power technology, numerous uses for RFID and robotics were displayed -- check out the full story here.

Intel and Samsung are going at it in the Solid-state Disk market. Check out this ComputerWorld article : Samsung's 256GB SSD Offers Capacity, Speed

Several weeks back the TED 2009 Conference was held -- if you haven't checked out the videos from that yet, I Highly recommend it. Also interesting at this conference was the launch of Singularity University - "Preparing Humanity for Accelerating Technological Change". With backers like Google, NASA and Ray Kurzweil, how can this NOT be cool!!

At the VMWorld Europe conference VMWare showed off its MVP (Mobile Virtualization Platform). Basically -- it would give you the ability to run multiple operating systems on your portable device. Sounds like some pretty cool stuff here.

Finally -- it is always fun to see creative help wanted ads : check this one out.

Security In the Cloud

Yesterday I watched a little bit of the Ustream of "Whose Cloud Is It Anyway" - a round table and meetup in Mountain View. The discussion, while interesting, was a little dry. I actually enjoyed tweets from Christofer Hoff and James Urquhart much more.

Today I ran across a presentation by Dan Kaminsky - a name I hear a lot (mainly on TWiT I believe). His presentation, below - is titled When Irresistible Forces Attack Security In The Cloud. The presentation covers security in cloud computing and has a number of interesting points:

• "Uncomfortable Fact #6: Virtualization Not Actually Required For Cloud Compromise" -- slide 26

• Slide 30 -- three classes of private clouds: Fully private, outsourced private and non-secure (i.e.: Amazon's S3)

The enterprise cloud play is the more interesting one to me. I have gotten over my disgust for the marketing hype frenzy by calling it the "cloud" (it also gives many magazines and blogs an avenue for pretend-creative article titles). I'm still looking for a good definition that is 'not' the same as the Internet, or an overall shift in computing architecture. Anyway....time to move on.

Now.... take the Kaminsky presentation and throw on a slew of acronyms provided by the government. Corporations have a number of laws, policies, audits, acts, trade secrets, terms of service, privacy and other things to worry about. The World Privacy Forum held this last week presents a very interesting report: "Privacy in the Clouds: Risks to Privacy and Confidentiality from Cloud Computing". I think the report drives home the point that there are many issues and things in cloud computing are still being hashed out. Some interesting findings include:

• Finding: Cloud computing has significant implications for the privacy of personal information as well as for the confidentiality of business and governmental information.

• Finding: A user’s privacy and confidentiality risks vary significantly with the terms of service and privacy policy established by the cloud provider.

• Finding: For some types of information and some categories of cloud computing users, privacy and confidentiality rights, obligations, and status may change when a user discloses information to a cloud provider.

• Finding: Disclosure and remote storage may have adverse consequences for the legal status of or protections for personal or business information.

• Finding: The location of information in the cloud may have significant effects on the privacy and confidentiality protections of information and on the privacy obligations of those who process or store the information.

A Network World article discusses the IDC Cloud Computing Forum. Joseph Tobolski, director for cloud computing at Accenture states "Some people create a list of requirements for security in the cloud that they don't even have for their own data center". Well....maybe they need BETTER requirements for their own data center!! I personally don't think people worry "too much" about security in the cloud ; it is a legitimate concern that any responsible business should question. The good news is that Cloud providers have the chance to do security right, and provide a more secure environment than the small/medium business could have done for itself. The bad news: it's early yet, and that completely secure (if there is such a thing) environment is not built yet.


When Irresistable Forces Attack

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Presentations & Slid cloud computing secu

GreenTech and DataCenters - Part 4

I wasn't planning a part 4 to my GreenTech week, but as I mentioned, there is a LOT of Green news out recently. Here are just a few more goodies I ran across today:

The Uptime Institute released its Global Green 100 List today. Many familiar names in tech are on the list including all of the companies I mentioned in GreenTech Part 2.

GreenBiz.com notes that Green, Tech and GreenTech are on the rise in the FastCompany 50 List. Cisco managed the #5 spot on the 2009 list. Cisco has a number of videos I found interesting lately:

• A new TechWise TV podcast is out and discusses Cisco EnergyWise

• John Chambers is 'the man'. This video at OpenZine is a talk he gave on the MIT campus and is long, but worth watching. If you don't watch the whole thing, do forward to about 44 minutes in where he answers a question -- I really like what he says here. He is an awesome speaker and as commented on the page with the video -- "John Chambers gets it" ; except for the comment John makes in the video about being a Red Sox fan. :)
  

• Another video: Rethinking Education for the 21st Century was posted on a Cisco blog.

Rackspace announced today some new tools available to help customers assess and reduce their environmental impact. Their carbon footprint calculator was developed by NativeEnergy.

Check out this video from Google and GE : Plug Into the Smart Grid

An article from the Wall Street Journal Environmental Capitalism section was pretty interesting: Purdue Researchers Put Emissions On Google Earth. Of course any excuse for me to use Google Earth is a good one.

GreenTech and DataCenters - Part 3

For part 3 of my GreenTech week, I have a number of miscellaneous links. I'll keep posting Green links as I run across them, but the following items were pretty interesting.

EWeek's 10 Things You Need to Know NOW About Green IT

Comprehensive (as in 45 page) report from Rackable and the BPM (Business Performance Management) Forum: IT Sustainability Imperatives in Internet and Ecommerce Business. I haven't had a chance to read 'all' of this yet, but it looks very good. They surveyed 275 professionals in December 2008 and January 2009 and also have perspectives from dialogs with prominent executives, thought leaders and industry influencers.

GigaOM's earth2tech reports that San Diego will Roll Out Smart Meters Mid-March

Article at CleanTechies: Distributed Energy Generation - the New Internet

Very interesting article at MIT Technology Review: Graphene for the Green Grid - Ultracapcitors that store more could help the grid run smoothly.

Canada's Advanced Network organization announces an initiative to lay foundation for a zero carbon economy.

I was looking for something to tie GRI standards to GreenTech, but instead found this piece on an ISO Standard for Assessing Energy Efficiency of New Buildings.

My list wouldn't be complete without mentioning the Green Grid. A new site design, white papers, tools and many other things make this site a must-read. The Data Center Facilities Pro blog has a nice write-up of the Green Grid Technical Forum held a few weeks back. Presentations from that forum are also posted on their site.

GreenTech and DataCenters - Part 2

Continuing where I left off yesterday with GreenTech..... today I'll cover what the big companies are up to with environmental sustainability, greentech, etc....

Cisco:

• Just a few short weeks back Cisco announced EnergyWise. I haven't had a chance to get 'really' familiar with the technology yet, but it seems pretty cool on the surface. A TMCnet blogger has his thoughts on the Cisco "energy tax" here. It's a Nortel favored argument, but I'll refer back to the video I blogged about here to tell you what I think about the energy tax criticism. I'm not saying EnergyWise is perfect or that you 'should' put your eggs in one basket, but come on..... SmartGrids have HUGE potential in 2009 and I think EnergyWise is in on the beginning of something great.
  

• Last Friday CNet had an article about "Cisco unveils Global blueprint for cities". Pretty cool stuff -- and it builds on Cisco's mission to become a more Global company.

IBM

• InformationWeek reports "IBM to Help Orange Data Center go Green". Partnership with IBM and Syracuse University.

• IBM Launches "Ready for IBM Energy & Environment" Validation for Business Partners.

• IBM Expands Efficiency Offerings. Announcement of a Strategic Carbon Management consulting service.

• IBM Brings Smart Meters to Malta. 5 year project to "design and deliver a nationwide smart utility implementation" to the nation of Malta.

Google

• Google: A Utility Company. Interesting blog post about Google purchasing an abandoned paper mill in rural Finland.

• On Feb. 9th the Official google.org blog wrote about home electricity use and combining smart meters with easy access to energy information. This (to me) was Extremely interesting. More information on the Google PowerMeter and other items can be found here.
  

Microsoft

• The Microsoft "Innovating to Improve the Planet" site is a pretty good source to find out what they are up to in the green department.

• The Microsoft Dynamics team has been up some interesting things. Check out this video about the Dynamics Sustainability Dashboard on Channel 9.

More still to come.... I am almost through my list of links. Success stories, green technologies and more on smart grids the rest of this week.

GreenTech and DataCenters - Part 1

I have been absolutely inundated recently with stories about Green technology, environmental sustainability and the like. I don't want to turn this into a GreenTech blog, but obviously power, renewable energy and environmental sustainability are huge topics for the data center industry.

There are several items in the $787 Billion Economic Recovery Bill that would benefit renewable energy and GreenTech companies, including: $11 Billion for Smart Grids and $15 Billion in renewable energy tax incentives. Cnet's Green Tech also has a nice write-up on the Bill.

I have so many links piled up that I am going to spread them out over this week. Today I'll start with the site that got me thinking about all of this .... The Green and Virtual Data Center. It is an excellent site, and they also have a new book out. The list below is a mix of sites from their 'links' section, and links from my bookmarks that I found interesting

Greenly -- Exploring Greenovation 24/7/365

CarbonFootprint.com

Carbon dioxide emissions calculator

Cassatt Power Savings Calculator

This one is a bit much (IMO), but.... Making Web Sites Green

EPA Tools and calculators

How much does Carbon Offsetting cost?

Planning for Energy Requirements: Dell's Data Center Capacity Planner


The Uptime Institute will host a 2009 IT Symposium: Lean, Clean and Green, April 13 - 16 in New York. Should be interesting.....


Up Next: What the big guys are up to: Cisco, Microsoft, Google, HP, IBM and others

Cisco News and Tweets

I need to work on my tweets. I read so many tweets that I forget to write some myself! Cisco is a company that really gets the power of Twitter. Many moons ago I thought Twitter was pretty silly. I imagine others did as well. It has evolved though, and is now thought by many to be a truly valuable tool in the social web arsenal.

Although Cisco's CTO Padmasree has more followers - my favorite is still Douglas Gourlay. With only 4,493 followers to catch her, I'm sure he'll have no problem. :)

Cicso news abounds recently ; here are the items I found interesting:

• Alan Cohen at Cisco discusses the Twiterati

• Data Center CEO Kevin Smith discusses pioneering data center energy management with Cisco EngergyWise. I think it will be really interesting to get some case studies of data centers using EnergyWise and see how it has helped them.
  

• Cisco powers the first 4G network in Moscow. I don't follow WiMAX as much as I would like to, but it is pretty interesting technology. "Cisco is providing Scartel with optical transport based on DWDM, a high-speed IP MPLS data network and data centre technologies designed to support high-quality video distribution. The network was designed to support the heavy traffic loads required of Scartel's network while offering an economical solution."

• Seeking Alpha has an interesting article about potential acquisitions for Cisco. I've always wondered about Riverbed. I really like what I have seen and read about their products, but I think they enjoy going up against Cisco and have huge potential on their own.
  

• Last but certainly not least: Cisco will hold a webcast this Thursday to "unveil a new Global Initiative". Should be interesting.....

P.S.: MY Twitter is http://twitter.com/johnrath

Processor Article: Colo or Managed Services?

I was interviewed a few weeks back for Processor magazine and the article came out last Friday. It discusses decision points and thoughts when deciding on whether colocation or managed hosting is right for your data center.

Check out the article here.