Notes from the Consultant’s Jungle

The challenge in using green energy alternatives such as wind or solar power in data centers is power density.   Data centers consume a lot of power with respect to their physical footprint, so they need very large solar arrays or large wind turbine farms to generate the necessary power for the facility.  Consequently, the amount [...]

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Many firms have gone looking for core/shell property with the intent of renovating these structures for use as a data center.  These projects are very capital intensive, and in many cases the benefits of having the existing structure are almost nil when viewed in the context of the broader project plan and budget.  However, many [...]

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Internet domain hoster and registrar, GoDaddy, has recently added business incorporation services to its palette of value added services. It’s reasonable to assume that individuals shopping for low cost domain hosting are launching small businesses. If you’ve shopped for a domain name lately, you know how difficult it is to find a domain close to [...]

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The Smart Grid concept is getting a boost from the Obama administration in the form of (with matching of private sector funds) approximately $8B capital investment over the next three years.  The United States Department of Energy is making a number of Smart Grid publications widely available, and the funding attracted by Smart Grid is [...]

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Posted by Bob Landstrom: CISSP, CGEIT

This week I was in New York City attending a meeting with the Executive Communication Group.  One night I decided to go for a walk, and as I was walking I reflected upon the fact that right there, in the streets of Manhattan where I walked, there was once a [...]

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Well, now I know why I’ve never come out on top whenever I buy one of Jim Cramer’s recomendations.
In a recent (10/22/2009) Mad Money piece on CNBC, Jim Cramer used the Equinix acquisition of Switch and Data to make the point that data centers are obsolete.  In his diatribe about why anyone with Equinix stock [...]

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When launching a new data center build project, where the data center will be located is a fundamental issue. There are many factors in deciding where the data center will be, but all of these factors can arguably be consolidated into two issues- Risk and Cost.
We mention risk in terms of Risk Management. [...]

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Posted by:  Bob Landstrom
The latest issue of CIO Insight has results from their annuals survey of top ten priorities of CIOs.  The online presentation can be found here.  Looking over this year’s top ten list left me with a few notable observations.

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Posted by Bob Landstrom
Enterprises have embraced the data center tier classification system developed by the Uptime Institute for evaluating their own data center facilities and those of potential colocation and hosting providers.
The subject of facility availability has matured over recent years.  The mind set has matured from recognition that existing IT facilities were a problem [...]

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Regular readers of this blog will know that we are strong advocates of container data centers as a step toward modular data center design and as a facility component for extremely dense data processing.  Earlier posts talked about 2008 as a breakout year for containers (it wasn’t) and containers used as facility components in cargo [...]

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