Notes from the Consultant’s Jungle

The past two years have brought an explosion of activity in the area of data center facilities.  On the provider side, we can talk about services we expect from the Cloud.  The proliferation of XaaS, exponential growth of content for Web 2.0 services, and the interest in Cloud-based services by the Enterprise drives demand for [...]

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Morgan Stanley plans to power their new data center in Scotland with a new generation of turbine generators called the Transverse Horizontal Axis Water Turbine (THAWT).  The $400M data center will require 150MW of power.  It will be powered initially from the utility grid but later transitioned to power generated by the underwater turbines of [...]

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We’ve discussed the topic of data center energy management in numerous posts, and we’ve talked about a Green Data Center Maturity Model.  If the topic of energy efficiency in the data center is of interest to you (and it should be) I’d like to recommend an excellent resource for you.
Cisco is conducting a webinar next [...]

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So many discussions with prospective Clients begin with the subject of data center tier ratings.  Many companies are struggling with data center facilities that no longer adequately serve their Business, and are seeking a path toward better scalability, availability, security, and lower cost of ownership.
In the mid-market segment, while there are exceptions to the [...]

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I promised an update on the progress of the ship-based data center concept floated (yes a pun) by International Data Security (IDS).  A recent post on Silverback’s blog explains that the first launch (perhaps a pun) is now delayed until Q3 of 2008, and gives a few more details.
IDS continues to see the ship-based data [...]

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In these times of economic stagnation, IT leaders’ attention turns to cost savings.  Indeed in times like these, the CFO is likely exerting strong authority and demanding budget concessions from departments across the enterprise.
Many companies are aggressively consolidating data centers as one way to address this demand.  There are a number of significant cost savings [...]

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For those of you who are regular visitors to this blog, this topic may seem rather basic.  However, I was recently asked to write an article on this subject and thought that if it’s good enough for that venue then perhaps someone will find benefit in reading here as well.  So here are some highlights [...]

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In earlier posts and conversations, I’ve mentioned my interest in container data centers and the opportunities they bring for certain types of implementations and use cases.  As a big fan of agility in IT in order to meet the dynamic demands of the Business, containers can be a valuable weapon in the arsenal.
In my conversations [...]

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In a recent interview with CIO Insight, Kenneth Brill of the Uptime Institute posits that the growth of demand for data processing is likely to cause enterprises to repeat data center construction projects every four to eight years. What?! Do it again?

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Over the past year, the European Commission has been sponsoring the development of a Data Center Code of Conduct to address the increasing energy consumption, environmental, economic and supply security concerns of the data center community.  If you’d like to read it for yourself, it can be found here.
This is an interesting endeavor, especially with [...]

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