Notes from the Consultant's Jungle

We are conducting a poll to gauge Business’ perception of data center tier ratings, here in late 2011.

Why are we doing this?  Well, we are seeing that perceptions about shopping for data centers with tier level as a requirement are changing.  We are seeing that, now that the community has had time to think about it, Business’ concept of data center tiers is evolving.  Without giving away the farm, we invite you to look at our poll in the sidebar of this blog and kindly register your opinion. [Read more →]

The process for drafting indicative pricing for data center IT installations typically follows a predicable path.  First, the configuration of IT kit is examined for expected power dissipation.  With the power estimates in hand, cooling and physical space estimates can be drafted.  With power, cooling, and space estimates, one can propose rack configurations for candidate cabinet power density levels on the computer room floor.  At the end we have what we need to get vendor quotes for the IT equipment and the impact on the data center (or quotes from collocation providers).

Cost Contribution of Cabling

One component that often goes unchecked, even during deeper rounds of data center cost estimation is the cost of cabling.  Cabling costs can be (usually are) rather significant, especially with the escalating price of copper.  While through the 90’s, data center planners considered the cost of copper as data centers require vast amounts in support of “below white space” and “above white space” infrastructure, since 2005 the price of copper has been a dynamic variable that added a new complicating factor to data center implementation budget planning accuracy. [Read more →]

We are conducting a market survey of data centers in India.  This is driven by an increase in interest we are seeing from customers seeking colocation and hosting services in the country of India.

If you share an interest in the results of our research, or if you are a commercial colocation or data center services provider in India, please drop us a line.

Through some of the work that I do for my Clients, I’ve helped to identify and reduce Shadow IT as a part of better aligning IT delivery with strategic business goals.  It has been sort of a mantra, that Shadow IT is a bad thing and must be eliminated.  Over the past couple of years though, I’ve increasingly found myself second guessing that mantra.

BYO IT

While governance and security are even more important now than in times past, the characteristics of IT services have changed around us.  Take end user devices for example. [Read more →]

I was having a drink with an old friend of mine, who is a very prominent and globally sought after risk management professional, and we got around to talking about Disaster Recovery Planning Software.  I asked him, “have you ever found one of those that you like?”  His response was not positive.

Quite often, I am called by a potential Client needing help with DR planning, and who is at the make/break point of a relationship with a DR planning tool vendor.  The conversation often goes something like this: [Read more →]

I really don’t know why several of my most recent posts are about smartphones.  This forum is about data center and IS security.  However, I am a mobile consultant, and smartphones are a key weapon in the consultant’s utility belt.

With that disclaimer, I was reading an article today in Gigaom about smartphone market share.  The graph is reprinted below.

There’s a lot to read between the lines in this and other similar reports over the past few months, one of which is what the impact of the Verizon iPhone will be.  So next year’s chart will be interesting to look at.

Oddly though, my motivation for banging out this quick post is the thought that occurs to me regarding Blackberry, in this regard.  In my personal opinion, I think that the Blackberries are going to quickly die off.  I think that their proliferation is being artificially buoyed by all the BES servers out there humming through their depreciation curves.  Maybe the RIM curve will be down there next to Microsoft next year.

I promise- no more smart phone posts for a while (I think).

HP does smart phones??

A lot of buzz on the wire today about Apple deciding to move from the Intel chip sets in its Macbook and desktop computers, and replace with an ARM chipset.  Most news sources, like this one, are quoting the story from SemiAccurate, which is breaking the news.

Apple already uses ARM chips in the iPad, and other circumstances are in line to make this transition a somewhat low-risk move for the product line.  Apple is said to also have been seeking fabrication capabilities for ARM chips.

At any rate, it seems that the x86 chips in Apple computers will be history in 2-3 years time.

This will undoubtedly result in lots of conversation around the office in the coming days.  We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Following the deal between Verizon and Terremark earlier this year, Louisiana- based CenturyLink has agreed to a deal to acquire Savvis for $2.5B.  CenturyLink is a fixed-line phone and Internet access company, saying that it intends to let business customers store and access data and applications over the Internet.

This is a continuation of the trend we see with carriers purchasing hosting companies as a way to acquire cloud service product capabilities.  In the case of CenturyLink though, this acquisition of Savvis comes on the heels of the recent acquisition of Qwest Communications (a $20B deal).

Savvis had targeted a ten percent growth in revenue from its hosting business this year, prior to the announcement of this deal.  The publicly available plans say that current Savvis CEO, Jim Ousley will run the new hosting unit within CenturyLink.  Integration of Savvis may be complicated by the concurrent integration of Qwest.  This marks an aggressive step by CenturyLink to expand revenues, and continues the pattern of telecom companies merging with hosting companies to meet the market of rising cloud demand.

In restaurants, airports, and public transportation I often hear debates over iPhone versus Droid.  These are discussions between owners of these devices, and often times with potential owners trying to decide which phone to invest in next.  By the way, I use the term “invest” very specifically, because these devices require more than writing a check.  They require an ergonomic lifestyle change, which for many users comes at the price of weeks or months of “friend-making” with their new phone.

One of the topics that comes up in most of these conversations has to do with the number of applications ( “Apps” ) that are available for the phone.

A friend of mine, Adam Somer, brought my attention to an article in Business Insider that contained the following chart:

Smart Phone Apps, 2011

The point of this chart, and the text in the associated article, is that the number of apps available for the Android is quickly catching up to the number of apps available for the iPhone.  This is nice to know, I suppose. [Read more →]

For another point of view on the topic of “flat data center networks” we share the following discussion with Nic Ilyadis of Broadcom.  Nic does a great job of explaining the motivation for this development, and the scenarios under which it’s a good fit, as well as advice toward building the data center network as flat from the very beginning, if one is considering a green field data center build.

This interview was done during the Data Center Dynamics event in Dallas, TX in December 2010.

Please share your thoughts on this topic by commenting below, or by taking our poll.