Notes from the Consultant's Jungle

Undoubtedly you’ve heard by now that Intel has a bid on the table to buy McAfee (for $7.7B). ¬†We’ve written before about the collaboration that’s been going on between the two companies for almost two years now, which we suspect is a leveraging of features at both ends of the stack to improve security of [...]

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We are working on a book about one of our favorite topics: Data center tier models, availability, and the alignment of business with availability requirements.  We plan to cover the models that enjoy the most mind-share, as well as models that are not talked about nearly as much, but yet are very relevant to the [...]

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In my classes at the university, I sometimes give students a project to create a malware pet shop or malware zoo.¬† The purpose is to make the students more aware of the “biodiversity” that really exists out there in the malware world.¬† We also often talk about the increasing use of malware and other network-based [...]

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We’ve just wrapped up day-one of this year’s Cloud Expo at the Javits Convention Center in New York City.¬† You know, it’s been nearly a year since I attended Cloud World in San Francisco, and over that period of time it surprises me how little new anyone is saying about cloud computing.¬† It borders on [...]

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We’ve talked about wind power for data centers and mission critical facilities, and often the subject of solar power comes up in those same conversations.¬† Dedicated commercial solar installations generating more than a megawatt are rare, and as such have very limited contribution as an energy alternative for data centers.¬† There is growing interest though, [...]

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TelX hosted a financial services roundtable event at their Financial Business Exchange (FBX) data center in Clifton, New Jersey. The panel of industry experts (and TelX customers) was moderated by the TABB Group’s Kevin McPartland, and introduced by TelX CEO Eric Shepcaro. Mr. Shepcaro introduced the event by giving his own personal background about why [...]

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Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal reports that Apple will be releasing a CDMA version of the iPhone, opening the door for service by Verizon Wireless. Many in the industry view Verizon Wireless as having the best network of the leading carriers, but AT&T’s lock on the iPhone has been a real ace in the hole.¬† If [...]

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A quick perusal of a typical contemporary IT project portfolio will show a strong representation of projects dependent upon, or directly related to the data center.  Changes in the growth and scale of data processing, applications, content storage, data communications, risk, compliance, and maturity of IT governance are all in some way connected to the [...]

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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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