In another recent post for example, we talked about wind power for data centers.  The proper confluence of geographical location, local codes, local weather conditions, and available space are all constraining factors in the consideration of wind and solar power at the capacity necessary for anything other than a very small data center (not to mention that the payback period on investment in this sort of technology tends to be very long).

A data center operator needs options that will reduce energy costs without having to rebuild the site infrastructure, and without disrupting the operational models that are in play for the Customers of the space.  For most asked this question, there are a handful of techniques that fall into the low hanging fruit category.

The first of these is the notion of raising the air temperature on the payload floor.  Last year, ASHRAE issued new recommendations that give clearance to raise controlled air temperature to 80 degrees F.  This could be a huge efficiency savings and could potentially increase the operational life of air conditioning equipment.  In many data center organizations, this seems to be a social engineering change, requiring convincing of those accountable for the operation of the IT equipment.  While there are cases that indeed justify not raising air temperatures to this level, we think that time will erode many of the hurdles that exists in this regard, and we’ll soon see higher air temperatures as the norm.

Air-side economizing is the technique by which one pulls in cold air from outside of the data center to supplement the cold air produced by the air conditioning equipment.  The trick is though, that the air has to be cool enough (and sufficiently dry), for a long enough period of time, in order for the approach to be effective.  Air side economizing isn’t something you’d see used in Atlanta or Dallas.  It might be a great option in Buffalo or Minneapolis.  This technique is enjoying some momentum.  Coupled with a raising of the air temperature as suggested above, it might be applicable in even more locales than is otherwise the case.

Another technique is containment of either the hot or cold aisle to reduce mixing of cool and warm air.  There are some very low cost ways to accomplish this, but the physical characteristics of the data center space will determine what is possible and to what degree it will be effective.  Some operators have installed plastic sheeting, much like what is seen at cold weather loading docks or refrigerated rooms.  This has demonstrated to be effective, but many organizations have resisted adoption of the technique over aesthetic reasons.

If you’ve had any successes with the techniques mentioned above, we’d love to hear your comments.  We’d also welcome other good ideas you may have about Green techniques for data center operators.

In the late ‘90’s, I was in the UK prospecting for data center space for an initial European footprint for E*Trade.  During that prospecting trip, I toured an old AT&T data center in a remote area North of London.  This facility was surrounded by earthen berms at least eight feet high, as well as a very sturdy barbed wire fence.  Why all this for a facility in the middle of the country side?

You may recall a period of time in the UK referred to as “The Troubles,” which was an ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland.  The Troubles occasionally spilled over into England and other countries.  The threat of bombings by the IRA caused planners of critical facilities to place this threat high on the matrix.  Thus, the inclusion of blast deflecting berms around this data center was a pragmatic feature for the time and location.

In 2010, a similar exposure exists on a global scale.  As more and more data and data processing, important to daily life and business operations, are consolidated into the data center, the facility structure itself rises in importance on the threat matrix of security planners.  The momentum of Cloud services accelerates this.

In a recent interview for a magazine piece, I mentioned physical security as one of the top issues for data center planning in the coming decade.  This morning, I read an article in Information Week about Terremark’s new “ultra secure” cloud data center in Northern Virginia.

This new data center features 12 foot earthen berms, DoD-approved security fencing, blast-proof exterior walls, armed guards, and security dogs.  Within the facility a Customer can order floor-to-ceiling concrete walls and steel mesh beneath the raised floor.  Vehicles entering the facility face security screening similar to government sites, with vehicle traps (similar to man traps), inspection by guards, under-vehicle inspection using mirrors, and bomb-sniffing dogs.

For those that question whether such an investment in security sells, the site is reported to have 40 tours on any given day, and has sold out within five months.  I expect to see similar features in data center plans much more frequently during the coming years, especially those that are built for Cloud Computing purposes.

I would welcome any stories you may have about robust physical security at other data centers.  Please submit a comment and share your thoughts.

A December post on the Data Center Knowledge blog reports new data centers powered entirely by the wind.  In particular, the article focuses on the Other World Computing site in Woodstock, Illinois (northwest of Chicago), which claims to operate the entire facility solely on the power from a single wind turbine.

OWC’s website does claim that the site is primarily powered by the wind turbine.  The website goes on to say that the site has four layers of power, although along with the turbine, municipal power, and generator backup they claim the UPS as a power source.  We think that claiming the UPS as a source of power for the data center is a bit of a stretch.  OWC invests a lot of web page real estate talking about its wind turbine.  Kudos to OWC for making such a strong statement and investment in the effort to create a green data center.  We would add though, that there is some fine print (though not necessarily related to OWC) to consider in this story.

First of all, the OWC data center is a small one.  From the publicly available information, it likely has a critical load of less than half of a megawatt.  This is a very small facility by most common standards.  Indeed, other examples claiming to be fully wind-powered are similarly small.  Microsoft’s Virtual Earth application is hosted in a single data center container, which is said to be powered by a wind turbine.  A data center container is even smaller than the OWC example mentioned above.

Another example of a data center claiming to be 100% wind powered is Midwest Data Center in Rock Port, Missouri.  Again, this data center is small.  The payload floor is 1,000 square feet and the critical load is likely below 200KW.

Without going further to support the point, suffice to say that the applicability of dedicated wind or solar power for data center operation is limited to very small facilities… unless of course there is an option to leverage a very large (acres) wind or solar farm on nearby property.  That is also provided that the wind blows hard enough and often enough in that location to produce the planned sustained amount of power for the facility.

This brings us to the second critical point in this discussion which is ROI.  In the OWC example, the operator is expecting a 10-14 year ROI period, assuming the wind blows strongly enough through that period to support the modeling assumptions.  We think this is an ROI period much longer than most would find favorable (and, we would suggest, longer than the productive lifespan of the facility before requiring substantial renovation).  Similarly, the cost to acquire this energy source, when compared to the payload size of the data center facility itself, is an excessively large percentage of the total cost to build the facility that most planners would decide to not take this path.  It would be an investment of principle in a commitment to be green, rather than one that would otherwise please the accountants.

Indeed if one looks at the web sites of the companies mentioned here, there is ample web real estate invested to promote the “Green-ness” of these sites and to fluff the feathers over the use of wind turbines.  These companies have made a strong commitment to natural renewable energy and are reaching out to Customers who have a similar set of principles.

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 firms continue the search through available property in hopes of finding a diamond in the rough that can be resurrected as a great data center.

Through our experience in helping clients with these searches, one has to sort through dozens of duds before finding a real candidate data center property.  While many problems can be overcome with freely flowing capital, there is a short list of show stoppers that in spite of all else, there is no way to make the property fit the intended purpose.  By properly arming your commercial realtor, one can save a lot of time by weeding out the candidate properties according to the most common road blocks.  We’ll discuss those here.

The first most common show stopper is insufficient ceiling height.  If a building hasn’t been built for use as a data center in the first place, or if it is an aged retired data center facility, chances are that the ceiling is too low for contemporary data center applications.  The slab-to-slab or slab-to-joist clearance must accommodate the raised floor, the height of the cabinets, overhead ladder racking, fire suppression systems, lighting, and for some designs a return air plenum.  Your design will determine the true requirements, but if you can’t imagine a three foot raised floor and a full height cabinet with cable trays on top of it, then the clearance is much too small.  This may not be the most important show stopper, but in our experience it is the most obvious and by knowing the ceiling clearance (from your realtor) ahead of time you can save yourself the time of inspecting the site.  Determine the slab-to-slab clearance you need and give that to your realtor as a requirement.  If the ceiling is low, just walk away.

The second most common show stopper is insufficient space.  This takes several forms.  One important point to remember when you give your realtor the assignment of finding candidate properties is to include space for MEP infrastructure as well as payload space in your requirements.  Space for the MEP plant can be as large as or even larger than the prescribed payload space.  Many clients forget this point when considering property requirements.  The second important point to consider is the geometry of the space available in the building.  The rectangle is the favorite shape of the data center designer.  It’s often not the favorite shape of building architects.  We’ve seen many properties that seem to meet the total square footage requirements on paper, but in actuality are L-shaped, C-shaped, diamond-shaped, and even round.  If the shape of the space is not a nice rectangle, then one must consider the impact on the yield of the space (it’s going to be lower than with the same square footage arranged as a rectangle).  If the space is too small for MEP and growth (of both MEP and payload), or if the space is not rectangular, just walk away.

The third most common show stopper is ready access to fiber.  If the property is far from a Tier-1 backbone, one should expect significant cost and lead time to extend the backbone to the property.  Underscore the word, “significant,” in that last point.  Keep in mind though that this doesn’t mean one should consider only urban locations.  Quite the contrary, there are lots of rural locations with good proximity to Tier-1 routes.  One just has to do the homework, and this is a point that not all commercial realtors are equipped to handle for you.  Get the fiber maps.  If the property is not close to a Tier-1 backbone, just walk away.

A fourth common show stopper is a set of covenants that ultimately preclude one’s ability to operate the property as a data center.  For the properties that look good on paper, a good realtor will inspect the covenants to make sure that you can operate external generators, store diesel fuel, attach satellite antennae, erect security fences, loading docks, and the other external features that all data centers have.  If the covenants restrict the features and functionality of a data center, just walk away.

The last common show stopper we’ll mention is hazardous material or contaminants.  Most often, this is an issue for a property that was formerly some sort of industrial manufacturing facility.  The older the property, the more important it is to run this issue to ground.  Discovering hazardous material during the construction process can derail the budget and timeline, and even worse, introduce risk to the people working there.  If residual particulate material is a factor, one must consider the cost and technology needed to purify the air so that IT equipment and personnel are not impacted.  If the site contains any sort of hazardous material, just walk away.

Finally, we’ll make a point we’ve made numerous other times in other articles.  Clients find themselves in a site search for a data center building out of the desire to save money in their data center project.  In very many cases, the value of the structure on the property is not a significant cost savings for the overall project.  As a result, this exercise is seldom a good use of time.  It has a better chance of success if the data center being planned is very large.  Otherwise, it’s likely that the exercise is more trouble than it’s worth.  The recommendation instead is to look for a quality colocation provider, leveraging the provider’s expertise in mission critical facilities and the shared amortized costs of the MEP infrastructure and supporting services.  The TCO advantage of such an approach can be significant.

We’re told that the incorporation services are being provided by a partner, The Company Corporation. Because business incorporation is not a recurring activity, the use of a partner makes even better sense for this service. While we are not deeply familiar with The Company Corporation, a walk through their web site reflects that they’re probably a very good fit for the type of user who will find quick, online registration of their business attractive. This is also well aligned with GoDaddy’s standing in this same context.

Hosters have been challenged in recent years by erosion of margin and high churn. Adding complimentary products and services is now critical to success in shared hosting. The trick, of course, is selection of services that make the core business more sticky and profitable. This happens through services that portend future sales and Customer loyalty.

One has to admire the mindshare commanded by GoDaddy in the shared hosting market. Their marketing has been powerful and effective. In our opinion thus far, GoDaddy’s mindshare is not so strong as a business resource. It’s possible that they elevate their standing as a business resource, but the look and feel of GoDaddy’s brand is somewhat orthogonal to what one expects as a credible business partner. Perhaps that’s just our expectation of the look-and-feel of a business resource, and different from the types of small businesses that GoDaddy is targeting. It’s a tough game they’re in, but hopefully we’ll see more business services that offer recurring sales and improved stickiness for GoDaddy as a resource for small businesses.

Among the goals of the Smart Grid concept are the following features of a modernized public electric utility system:

• Self-healing from power disturbance events
• Enabling active participation by consumers in demand response
• Operating resiliently against physical and cyber attack
• Providing power quality for 21st century needs
• Accommodating all generation and storage options
• Enabling new products, services, and markets
• Optimizing assets and operating efficiently

So what does this have to do with networks and IPv6?  Well, the implications of the capabilities and services outlined above will depend on monitoring and control of both delivered and consumed power at very intricate levels.

Essentially, what is at play here, is telemetry capabilties from the distribution to end-user appliance level (potentially).  Even if we limit the model to telemetry at the residential power meter, the number of networked devices is astronomical.

Ok, so at this point it’s easy to connect the dots.  We have a very large number of end-point IP addresses to be introduced onto this control network.  Is it possible to use IPv4 addresses with Network Address Translation (NAT)?  Possibly so, but it won’t be easy.  It would be much easier with IPv6.

So Smart Grid is a natural market enabler for IPv6 adoption, right?  Well, there are hurdles.  For one thing, utility equipment has not been an early adopter of IPv6.  Indeed, even in contemporary data center environments, many newer building management systems are not yet supporting IPv6.  So one source of friction is the device technology available for electric utility applications.  Many other standards that are in play in this space would also require modification to support IPv6.

There are many forces at play, but Smart Grid is in a position to significantly accelerate proliferation of IPv6.

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 decisive battle fought in “The War of the Currents.”  Let me share this story with you:

In the late 19th century, the US government was deliberating on whether to use AC or DC power for residential and industrial service.  There were two prominent personalities at opposite sides of this debate, thus establishing the battle lines- Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse.

You’ll recall Edison as the famous inventor of the 19th century.  Thomas Edison is of course well known as the inventor of the phonograph and the incandescent light bulb.  Edison had been experimenting with DC power and developing ways to commercially distribute DC power.  There are some other very interesting things about Thomas Edison.  Besides his scientific achievements, Edison was very ahead of his day in the area of animal rights.  Thomas Edison was very outspoken about animal cruelty and an activist of sorts for animal rights, well before there was any such movement in the broader society.  He was also an outspoken opponent of capital punishment.  He was very vocal in his opposition of execution as a form of punishment in the judicial system.  And finally, while certainly not unique to him alone, Thomas Edison had a very large ego and was extremely competitive.

The other personality in our War of the Currents was George Westinghouse.  George Westinghouse, of course, was the famous American industrialist.  Westinghouse is credited with a number of revolutionary mechanical inventions, but in the late 1800’s he became interested in electrical power distribution and was largely focused on the work done by Nikola Tesla with AC power.  In 1885, Westinghouse began experimenting with AC power in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

By this time, Edison had already demonstrated DC power distribution by establishing the very first residential utility service, powering 59 homes in lower Manhattan with 110 volts DC.  Very shortly though, Westinghouse accomplished a similar feat in Great Barrington, Massachusetts using a hydro-power generator with 500 volts AC.

The war between AC and DC subsequently ensued!

Many successful of AC and DC power distribution installations were demonstrated, but very soon it was apparent that AC power had the upper hand and long-term promise for industrialization of America.  In a last ditch effort to regain the lead, Thomas Edison came up with a plan designed to create the impression that AC power, with its associated higher voltages, was unsafe for delivery into people’s homes.

Edison hired an engineer to create a device that would electrocute and kill animals with high voltage AC electricity.  In 1887, a number of public electrocutions of animals were performed in New York City under Edison’s plan.  The public was appalled at the act, but not frightened themselves.  The State of New York, on the other hand, was very impressed and purchased the machine from the engineer as the basis for execution of condemned prisoners.  In August of 1890, the the first electric chair execution took place in New York.  The early animal rights activist and staunch opponent of capital punishment had given the world the electric chair after demonstrating electrocution of animals.

In 1911, George Westinghouse was awarded the “Edison Medal” by the AIEE, for meritorious achievement in the development of the alternating current system light.

A powerful ego can be a dangerous thing.

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 should immediately sell, he made the following nearly unbelievable points.

First, he blamed the strong buy and hold recommendation of industry analysts on the fact that these analysts are experts in their field.  His logic rests on the position that because these are data center industry analysts, they’re unaware of broader technology issues.  That’s right.  He’s blaming data center industry analysts for having expertise in their field of knowledge.  If you grant some credit to Cramer that maybe he is in fact an expert of his own (which before today I sort of did the same), you’ll perhaps think differently after the following.

Jim Cramer cited the recent Intel earnings call content about the Nehalem processor yielding an 8:1 advantage in server power.  Somehow, Cramer did some math to convince himself that every eight servers out there will soon turn into one,… ergo, there is eightfold less demand for data center real estate.  If Jim Cramer had any understanding of technology… or even the technology sector in general, he’d have jerked himself back into reality with the recollection of Moore’s Law.  Moore’s Law has been in play for decades, is in play today, and will be in play tomorrow.  Throughout this time, the demand for data centers has grown to grossly outstrip supply.  Is this really the extent of the gray matter behind Cramer’s financial recommendations?

Perhaps even more fundamental than the point about Moore’s Law is the basic economics underlying the costs of mission critical facilities.  Unless Cramer thinks that risk management is also a stale concept, we must acknowledge the demand for secure and highly available computing facilities into the distant future.  While in better economic times, there may have been some enterprises with the resources to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in data center construction and operations, but in the current economic times the natural alternative is to buy colocation services.  This is one of the fundamental drivers in today’s demand for colocation real estate, and the justification for colocation provider expansions and M&A activity.

We can excuse the fact that Cramer isn’t able to correctly pronounce Nehalem (or Equinix for that matter).  However, if he had spent any time at all in the technology sector this sort of tongue slip would be just about impossible.  Furthermore, even if data center space is becoming an unwanted commodity as Cramer led his audience to believe, the shallowness of his analysis is further evidenced by the missed observation that by acquiring Switch and Data, Equinix not only elevates its status as a premier colocation services provider but also strategically defends its turf from any global competitor (by blocking other global providers from gaining a strong US presence).

This whole thing was sort of a welcomed revelation to me.  I was almost thinking that I must be some sort of evil curse on Cramer’s stock recommendations since every time I take his advice my fortunes move in the opposite direction.  It would be unfare to expect Jim Cramer to be an expert on all businesses, but I did expect that his backoffice support was better than this.  Because I happen to be an expert in this space, I now realize the shallowness of this show’s analysis.  As such I can take it with the grain of salt it deserves.

We mention risk in terms of Risk Management. Even if a data center is not specifically a disaster recovery site, many issues involving the physical location of the data center are evaluated to assess risk to availability of the equipment and data that would reside there. For example, exposure to environmental threats such as flooding, storms, earthquakes, and so on is often evaluated. Man-made environmental threats such as proximity to chemical plants, railways, gas lines, and so on are included here too. Risk management evaluations will also consider factors such as local crime rate, political stability, and threats from war or terrorism. For a security and risk management professional, this list is long, but any risk exposure is also prioritized and weighted for pragmatic consideration when evaluating site selection for a data center.

In terms of cost, there are two major components to consider. The first is the MOOSE cost. MOOSE is a term coined by Forrester to represent Maintenance, Operation, and Ongoing Support Expenses. It essentially means the costs to “keep the lights on,” as they say. Support staff, maintenance, and utility expenses are big line items in the MOOSE budget.

When we talk about MOOSE costs, a lot of attention falls on the subject of energy costs, since the utility costs of data centers is such a large portion of the operational expense budget, and draws attention to data centers as high consumer industrial facilities. This is a very important point.

These points are brought together in a recent article in Information Management by Mel Duval quotes a report from Tishman Technologies that suggests a “Top Ten” list of best countries in which to build a data center. This survey proposes the best countries in which to build a data center, largely based on the risk elements mentioned above. Here are their conclusions:

1. Iceland, Reykjavík - Low-energy cost, free cooling

2. United States, North Carolina - Low-energy cost, favorable labor, and fiber optics

3. China/Vietnam; Shanghai -Extraordinary demand and new/diverse fiber optics

4. Latvia (no city given) - Low-cost hydro power, favorable labor

5. India, Mumbai - Extraordinary demand, favorable labor

6. Russia, St. Petersburg - Favorable telecom, free cooling, favorable labor

7. Canada, Vancouver - Favorable labor, free cooling, favorable telecom

8. Japan, Toyko - Extraordinary demand, favorable telecom

9. New Zealand (no city given) -Strategic location, green power, favorable labor

10. United Arab Emirates, Dubai - Strategic location, favorable labor, telecom

This is an interesting list, but I’d like to contrast with a bit of pragmatism (that no doubt the authors of the list are aware of).

The idea of identifying countries for locations of data centers based on risk and access to low cost energy is an academic exercise that not many enterprises can take advantage of. Aside from the Web 2.0 and mega cloud providers, not many enterprises have the ability to so broadly cast their site selection net.

I’ll choose Iceland to make my point. Iceland is a good pick for the number one spot as defined by the study. It comes out on top of studies like this because of natural geothermal power sources, lots of free cooling, and it’s a stable political environment. From that perspective, it’s a good choice.

The problem though is all the other difficulties around placing an IT footprint there, if you’re not already stationed in that country. It’s one thing for, say a New York-based company, to put a data center in North Carolina and recruit the support and operations staff to run the facility. Can you imagine trying to do that for a site in Iceland? Who is going to build the facility and project manage the job? It’s hard enough to manage such an undertaking in your own country. So my point is that if you don’t already have a presence in the country of interest then the benefits of lower energy costs through operating there are going to be pushed to the side.

There’s an important point about global IT infrastructure that is often overlooked in discussions about data center locations. Increasingly since 2001, there are legislative and regulatory constraints around electronic information storage and transmittal. In North America, where I write this article, two of the most obvious in this regard are Homeland Security and PIPEDA. If you have customer data stored and processed in your data processing systems, it is a complicated issue to transmit and store that information across political borders.

In the US and around the world now there are emerging legislative factors that specifically impact facilities that are large consumers of energy (i.e., data centers). This legislation is focused on carbon reduction, in many cases by levying tax penalties on heavy consumers of energy. Bills such as Waxman-Markey now coming into the light of day are going to cause significant financial pain for those enterprises that recently invested in large data center construction projects.

The other issue of course is the whole idea of building a data center. Even in more favorable economic times, only the largest of enterprises can cost-justify investment in creating and maintaining a purpose-built data center. The much more attractive option is colocation. With colocation, you avoid the capital investment (huge, by the way) of building mission critical infrastructure that data centers need. You also avoid the burden of creating your own world-class operations staff and procedures that are the real drivers of high availability. In other words, you concentrate on what your business is good at, and leave the data center expertise to the data center experts.

When in a colocation model, the issues around energy costs shift perspective dramatically. Sure, you may want to demonstrate “Greenness” in some way and have an expectation that your colocation provider is Green-aware. However, you’re leveraging a shared power/cooling infrastructure with the other tenants in the colocation facility so the Green topic shifts to those energy management options above the white space, which you do control directly and are much easier to demonstrate energy efficiency results.

This brings us back to the question of where the data center should be located. By choosing a colocation provider with presence in a large number of active business markets can yield benefits to the enterprise. Chances are that the provider will have a site very close to where your IT staff is already located. Chances are too that the provider’s sites in other markets can yield favorable options for BC/DR planning. Also, a colocation provider with national scope can be leveraged for excellent network density and carrier availability. Finally, if your customers are also located in that provider’s facilities it’s possible to take advantage of significant telecom cost savings by connecting to customers within the already-built shared infrastructure.

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.

First let’s have a look at the list.  The following is the top ten list for 2010 from CIO Insight:

• 1. Business productivity and cost reduction
• 2. IT/Business alignment
• 3. Agility and speed to market
• 4. Business process re-engineering
• 5. IT cost reduction
• 6. IT reliability and efficiency
• 7. IT strategic planning
• 8. Revenue-generating IT innovations
• 9. Security and privacy
• 10. CIO leadership role

Before striking any comment on the order of this list, it’s important to point out that this is a compilation of responses from the surveyed CIOs, and the priority rankings is not necessarily applicable to every CIO that contributed.  There are some interesting observations though.

First of all, it’s heartening to see IT/Business Alignment, Agility and Speed to Market, and IT Strategic Planning all in the top ten.  To notice any of these three being absent would be very concerning.  These are, I would argue, defining directives of the CIO role in any organization.  The ranking of IT Strategic Planning as far down as seventh on the list is, I believe, a change from prior years’ surveys.  It’s probably safe to assume this drop in focus on strategic planning is the result of many firms taking a tactical, survivalist, mentality in the current economic climate.

A similar motivation is probably the cause for Business Productivity, Cost Reduction, and Reliability and Efficiency being in the top ten.  The high rankings for each of these is, I think, a reflection that in the current economic climate, CIOs are investing majority of focus on issues of bang-for-the-buck.

One topic on the list that is concerning because of its low ranking is that of Security and Privacy.  This is clearly a top-of-mind issue within and without mahogany row, as well as for Customers.  The placement of this issue as ninth of the list suggests that this very critical issue is possibly suffering because of the attention given to issues more directly related to expense and revenue.

It’s very interesting to see the idea of revenue generation of IT innovations making the top ten list.  Could this be a “fight-back” play on the economic front from IT organizations?

We’d be remiss not to notice the inclusion of the CIO’s role in the organization on the top ten list.  This is reflective of the issue of where does the CIO’s influence stand in the grand scheme of the organization.  While this has been somewhat of a recurrent theme in CIO roundtables recently, it may also be drawing even more mindshare given the economic pressures facing organizations this year.

As always, your comments and contributions to this discussion are invited.