Don't buy cloud computing hype: Business model will evaporate

Compelling devil's advocate view of cloud computing. Author's definition of cloud computing: data center on-demand.

From what you read and hear of the buzz surrounding cloud computing, it sounds like a model that will just steamroller over the whole data center industry and make everything we've built over the past two decades obsolete. It will allow IT to scale without effort, at minimal cost! It is an on-demand data center with zero capital outlay! It slices, dices and juliennes! But even in the best-case scenario it seems like it can only really solve a small subset of the industry's needs. In the worst case it will be a punch line for lame jokes a few years from now, much like other over-hyped buzzwords from the past.

Search Data Center article

Survey: Data Center Budgets Will Stay Pretty Much the Same in 2009

Of course, you only care if it's YOUR budget.

AFCOM survey indicates that nearly two-thirds of managers of large data centers will maintain or increase their budgets in 2009, despite the deepening recession. The remaining one-third will lose about 15 percent of their budgets, with much of the reduction involving travel and training expenses.

A noted data center industry association reported Dec. 23 in a survey of IT managers that nearly two-thirds will see their IT budgets stay the same or even increase in 2009, and that the remaining one-third will lose only about 15 percent of their budgets.

eWeek article

Economic meltdown to change telecom landscape, report says

The tech industry that includes the telecom and the enterprise networking sectors has gone through some hard times in the last 20 years, but the author of a new economic forecast for the technology industry says he's never seen anything like this.

The title says it all. In Surviving a Tech Market Nuclear Winter: A Planners Handbook to Tech Success in Today's Challenging Financial Times, industry analyst and consultant Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corporation, says "it's hard to see how we could have a worse juxtaposition of planning activity and economic events." But Nolle also believes that if companies take the right actions in a bad market, they can come out of this economic crunch stronger than when they went into it.

Search Telecom article

10 Predictions for the Future of SAAS and On-Demand

Here's a compelling set of predictions on some of the business ramifications of software as a service.

oSAAS, or cloud computing, on-demand applications or whatever you want to call it, is increasingly important in the enterprise. One software-as-a-service company, Innotas, provides an on-demand Project Portfolio Management package specifically designed for IT organizations. Customers include Forbes, Hamilton Beach and Simon & Schuster, as well as financial services, health care, retail, technology, telecommunications and energy organizations. Innotas CTO, founder and SAAS evangelist Demian Entrekin shares with eWEEK his thoughts on what lies ahead for SAAS as it continues to grow into a major marketing, sales and administration tool for enterprise business.

eWeek article

Google: Raise Your Data Center Temperature

The following article speaks of a growing trend of raising temperature set points in large scale data centers. Lifeline Data Centers believes this is a viable option assuming that hot air removal is well-managed.

The biggest players in the data center industry are raising the thermostats in their data centers, with some saving hundreds of thousands of dollars in energy costs in the process.

The latest company to focus attention on temperature in the data center is Google. “The guidance we give to data center operators is to raise the thermostat,” said Erik Teetzel, an Energy Program Manager at Google. “Many data centers operate at 70 degrees or below. We’d recommend looking at going to 80 degrees.”

Data Center Knowledge article

Carrier diversity as important as the costs of power

Finally, an article that addresses how important telecom connectivity is to data center site selection.

For data center managers looking for the best place to locate a data center, the price of power has been at the forefront of the discussion. Mega corporations are building data centers near dams to access three-cent per kWh utility rates, but fiber diversity is a growing concern, and is probably number two or three on the site selection criteria.

The Department of Homeland Security advises companies to seek diversity (i.e. multiple vendors) amongst fiber carriers, but the carriers don’t share maps — it’s part of their competitive advantage. And a lot of times, multiple carriers are in the same trench, which won’t provide resiliency in the event of a cable cut.

Serverspecs article

The great paradigm shift of cloud computing is not self-service...

This is the best article on real cloud benefits I have read this year.

There has been significant discussion over the short life of the term "cloud computing" about how little it differs from concepts like managed hosting and ASPs. And there is some truth to these observations; if you really look closely, what are the key differences between EC2 and a more traditional managed hosting provider? Some would say multi-tenancy, self-service and pay-per-use (including billing and elastic capacity). With specific regard to EC2, I would tend to agree.

(I would also hasten to point out that Amazon provides some very PaaS-like services in conjunction with EC2, such as Simple Queuing Service (SQS) and SimpleDB.)

CNet article

Shifting IT business models in time of economic crisis

Adopting flexilbility as a key IT strategy gives CIOs like Peter Whatnell the ability to shift in changing market conditions.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Peter Whatnell, CIO of Sunoco Inc., prepared three budgets for next
year. The first scenario lays out what IT would have proposed had the financial crash not occurred. The second is the plan if his budget stays flat. And the third? What a 20% reduction in budget would look like.

"In each case, we have said, 'This is what we deliver, this is what you would get for it, this is the consequence for stopping or reducing, and this is how much money you would save.' So, we're trying to be anticipatory with that," Whatnell said, in an interview with SearchCIO.com at the SIMposium 08 conference in Orlando this week.

Search CIO article

360 degree virtual tour of Lifeline Data Centers Eastgate phase I

Lifeline has just posted a 360 degree virtual tour of our first 30,000 square feet of space. This picture was taken in early November. We'll be updating it periodically until the opening in February 2009!

Eastgate virtual tour

Debating IT's True Value

Interesting article on valuing internal IT against the wide availability of outsourced IT services. Should in-house staff worry?

The rise of IT services offers a unique opportunity for IT shops to measure their true value. But not everyone agrees.

One of the few bright spots in these tough times has been the market for IT services. Amidst all the gloomy headlines—the talent shortage, the economic and financial crises, layoffs and lowered forecasts from the tech industry, rising unemployment in the broader economy—IT services employment has gone up.

CIO Insight Article

Outsourcing deals being re-evaluated in weak economy

IT outsourcing remains steady at most large companies, but the weak dollar and service issues are causing some CIOs to reconsider their decisions. And that's not all -- loss of flexibility and control can also be factors.

In a tough economic environment, flexibility definitely becomes more important. Executing change orders, modifying manufacturing orders or altering marketing pitches delivered during telephone contacts are all more difficult when the work is outsourced. "You don't have the luxury of saying, 'Come on team, let's go!'" explained David Rutchik, managing partner at Pace Harmon, a Washington, D.C., consultancy that specializes in outsourcing issues.

SearchCIO article

The problem for web hosting is that everybody wants a free lunch

It can’t be easy to be a web hosting company. On the Internet everybody wants a free lunch (or at least a very cheap one). And this of course includes hosting.

To prove this point, we looked at search data from Google and found something quite interesting for the term “web hosting” (using Google’s excellent Insights for Search tool).

Royal Pingdom article

IT Management Slideshow: Top CIO Priorities for 2009

As expected, cost-cutting goals have expanded, but it’s not the whole ballgame in 2009. Here’s what more than 220 IT executives listed as their top priorities in business, management and technology priorities.

CIO Insight article

Data centers, corn and cows in the Midwest

Every year, I am amazed that this survey omits a critical category; access to telecommunications carriers. Without access to multiple, varying tiers of bandwidth and transport, how can this be a meaningful survey?

More than just corn is popping up in Des Moines. There are also data centers.

Google and Microsoft have both built data centers in Iowa, and apparently for good reason. According to a Boyd Company data center location study, the Midwest is one of the best places to build a new facility -- if you can.

"If a company is looking for a project, if you look at the cost of land, insulation from natural disaster, electric power rates, ability to hire skilled labor – the Midwest has all of that," said John Boyd, president of the Princeton, N.J.-based company.

Search Data Center article

Google Switches Stance on Net Neutrality

This will be interesting to watch.

Google's proposal to Internet carriers marks a departure from its past position on net neutrality.

Google has approached Internet carriers with a proposal to create a "fast lane" for its own content, countering its previously stance of equal network access for all content providers, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

CIO Insight article

Business continuity planning consultants: Are they worth the money?

So you are embarking on building a comprehensive business continuity plan, or looking to significantly improve your fledgling plan. Your first question should be: "Can we do it ourselves or should we hire some help?" From my talks with companies, I have found that about half utilize consultants and the other half go it alone.

There are standard steps you should take to determine if a consultancy firm will be worth the money, and a follow-up check list to use for gauging the firms worthy of consideration.

SearchDataCenter article

Cloud computing not the answer for every business

Cloud computing not the answer for every business

This article hits the nail on the head regarding what works in a cloud environment.

Companies like Amazon and Google have been touting cloud computing as the future of IT, but customers need to ask questions before doing their computing "in the cloud."

Cloud computing refers to the practice of running business software applications on someone else’s network. Instead of buying its own servers and running software on them, a company contracts with a third party vendor that provides them with the computer processing capacity they need at the vendor’s data center. The computing capacity is available as needed, much the way electricity is provided by a utility.

Suite101.com article

With economic downturn, Dell, HP cut U.S. server prices

Nice opportunity to get in on some immediate deals.

In a response to the U.S. recession, IT hardware vendors like Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. have responded by reducing hardware prices. Conversely, Europe and other markets have begun to see server prices increase because of currency exchange fluctuations.

Take, for instance, Dell; the company recently reduced its U.S. hardware prices almost across the board, according to Mason Reay, the vice president of Dell marketing operations. And during the last quarter, by cutting prices, Dell has exceeded earnings expectations .

SearchDataCenter article

Finding IT's upside in the downturn

The economy may be tanking, but that doesn’t mean the hopes and priorities of IT leaders are in a freefall.

Dan Gingras expected panic.

Gingras, a former CIO at Bausch & Lomb and Watts Regulator Co. and now a partner at the consultancy Tatum LLC, frequently consults with CEOs and corporate boards on IT strategy. After the Wall Street fallout and the looming uncertainty following it, Gingras expected his clients to sound the alarm, particularly on IT spending.

CIO Insight article

Lifeline's Eastgate project phase one nearing completion

This week Lifeline Data Centers installed the first four generators at the Eastgate Mall campus in Indianapolis. Lifeline purchased the former retail mall in May 2008 and has been working to open the first 30,000 square feet of data center.

Lifeline provides data center facilities and services for its clients. Companies use Lifeline's space to build primary or second computer rooms to support their business. Lifeline offers a flexible approach so that clients can use the space to best suits their business needs.

Once complete, the Eastgate project will include 450,000 square feet of data center space, 300,000 square feet of supporting office and storage space, and ample parking for clients. Lifeline is one of only a few locations in the US where companies can purchase 5000 feet or more of contiguous private cage space.

Lifeline builds data center space to a 99.995% uptime standard, with critical systems such as power and cooling built not only as redundant, but are as concurrently maintainable.

Lifeline also offers some of the best pricing for 99.995% uptime data center space in the US. Lifeline's pricing starts at $17 per foot per month.

Sustainability and risk management: beyond green IT

The CIO is a key player in the new sustainability initiatives that are popping up in enterprises across the country.

At large U.S. companies, preserving the environment has spread beyond the data center to encompass sustainability efforts across the corporation. These organizations are moving quickly to minimize negative environmental impacts in all facets of their businesses. But they're not just embracing corporate responsibility more tightly. They're after increased profits.

Mitigating environmental risks that in turn can affect long-term profitability and growth potential has become a mandate at enterprise-sized companies. In mid-July, the Sustainable Investment Research Analyst Network (SIRAN), a nonprofit organization made up of analysts whose firms are devoted to sustainability issues, reported that 86 of the 100 largest publicly traded U.S. companies now note their sustainability efforts in their annual reports.

SearchCIO article

A CIO Perspective on Change Management

The discipline of change management is as old as computers themselves. Yet the advent of the personal computer and its bottom-up acceptance and growth in the enterprise put many disciplines like change management on the back burner. Many of us have paid the price for this lack of discipline. This article talks about the business side of change management.

The BTM Institute interviews Robert Keefe, CIO of Mueller Water Products and member of the Society for Information Management (SIM) to get some perspective on effectively handling technology-related change management and organizational change management.

Managing change often ranks among the top 10 concerns of the 3,600 senior technology professionals who belong to the Society for Information Management (SIM). Robert Keefe, the president of SIM International, says that although change management ranked seventh in SIM's 2007 survey, the percentage difference between each ranking was very close.

Baseline article

Please don't hug the servers

Here's an old problem rearing its head on a new technology platform.

Virtual servers are not free, but some users are treating them that way. It's so easy and inexpensive to provision new virtual servers these days that users are asking for them for all sorts of temporary applications - and then not telling anyone when they're done with them. At one point the practice became common enough at Qualcomm that IT jokingly coined a term for people who were sitting on idle virtual server capacity: Server huggers.

ComputerWorld article

Gartner: 25 ways to cut IT costs

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Cutting costs is "never an activity with long lead times," Gartner Inc. guru Ellen Kitzis said at Symposium/ITxpo 2008 in Orlando. Kitzis, a research vice president at the Stamford, Conn.-based consultancy, teamed up with colleagues at a packed 8 a.m. panel to give CIOs a roadmap to trim costs.

Here are their 25 tactical tips across four categories: IT management; enterprise software; enterprise infrastructure and operations, the networks and telecom; and enterprise infrastructure, hardware and IT operations.

SearchCIO article

Mother Nature’s assault on electricity and the Internet

Rodents and telecom carriers seem to be the biggest culprits. Coincidence?

We may be screwing up Mother Nature, but she is getting back at us in her own way. And she knows we love electricity and the Internet.

Though a lot of outages are man-made, there are a huge amount of power outages directly caused by nature every year. Causes include storms and hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding, and more often than not, animals too curious for their own best.

We had a look at some of the nature-made power outages so far in 2008, focusing mostly on the United States and North America, and how power outages have affected data centers and ISPs.

Outages caused by animals...

Royal Pingdom article

Microsoft rolls out container data center strategy for cloud computing

Say goodbye to chillers and CRAC-units, say goodbye to raised floors and traditional disaster recovery. And say hello to the new paradigm, courtesy of Microsoft’s data center team.

Microsoft’s goal in 2008 was to shake up the data center community in a big way, starting with Mike Manos’ announcement at AFCOM that Microsoft would be deploying containerized data centers, to Christian Belady’s “Data center in a tent” experiment with a PUE of 1.0. Mission accomplished.

These guys are pushing the envelop like no one else in the industry — rabble rousing at ASHRAE TC 9.9 meetings, calling out vendors, and blogging about it every chance they get. They’re literally scaring people who have built their reputation and businesses on traditional data center design — and I don’t just mean the people selling chillers and raised flooring. These engineers are mad scientists, flipping their noses at decades of conventional wisdom.

IT Knowledge Exchange article

Gartner: Cloud Computing Causing Confusion

It's disturbing when the industry experts are confused about new terminology. What does Cloud Computing mean to you?

Cloud computing is “creating a lot of confusion in the market,” according to Gartner, which says dueling perceptions of cloud computing are muddling expectations about its benefits.

“The term cloud computing has come to mean two very different things: a broader use that focuses on ‘cloud,’ and a more-focused use on system infrastructure and virtualization,” said David Mitchell Smith, vice president and Gartner Fellow. “Mixing the discussion of ‘cloud-enabling technologies’ with ‘cloud computing services’ creates confusion.”

Data Center Knowledge article

Sears.com Melts Down On Black Friday, But Costco, Walmart, Saks and Kmart Have Issues, Too

The best laid plans...

Sears.com suffered the worst Web problems on Black Friday (Nov. 28), experiencing a series of complete site crashes for much of the day. Although no other major retailer came close, according to preliminary reports, many of the industry's largest merchants suffered site slowdowns or other Web problems, including Walmart, Kmart, Saks, Overstock, Amazon, Target, Kohl's, Costco and Buy.com.

Sears.com was "completely offline," said Shawn White, director of operations at site performance monitoring company Keynote Systems. "And if anybody made it through without getting redirected (to a placeholder page that said the site was experiencing load-related difficulties), their experience would have just been horrendously slow. Slow to the point they would have walked away."

StoreFrontBackTalk article

How CIOs make technology investments

Some of the decision criteria mentioned in this article suprised me. Do they surprise you?

T. Ravichandran, an associate professor at Rensselear Polytechnic Institute's Lally School of Management and Technology, has been studying what influences IT technology investment as a process in depth, along with teaching courses in IT value creation, IT strategy, and supply chain management. In fact, his latest paper, published by the Journal of Information Technology and Management, is called "A Comprehensive Investigation on the Relationship Between Information Technology Investments and Firm Diversification."

The BTM Institute recently sat down with Professor T. Ravhichandran of Rensselear Polytechnic Institute's Lally School of Management and Technology to discuss his research findings about the influencers that drive technology investment decisions, the way organizations monitor investments, and the role innovation plays in the investment mix. Here's what he had to say:

Baseline article

Data center managers becoming superstars?

I love this story. Rarely do the technical experts of our world get a chance in the limelight.

Long relegated to the dungeons of the IT world, hidden in dark rooms and tinkering with facility equipment, the data center facility manager is now becoming more wanted, and harder-to-find.

As the New York Times puts in its article, data center facility managers were often thought of as “blue-collar workers in the high-tech world.” Really, though, that hasn’t changed much. There is much of that blue-collar attitude among data center facility managers that often comes from their penchant for tinkering. That’s why many of them became engineers in the first place, because they like tinkering.

Techtarget article

Cloud Computing: What the heck do you mean?

Here's a great explanation from Forrester Research on Cloud Computing, the different classes of services that are now being offered, and what's being relabeled as Cloud Computing, also known as being "cloudwashed."

The Cloud, As Seen in 2002

Is cloud computing a new way of computing? Or a new buzzword for an elderly concept? Mashable takes the latter position, asserting that cloud computing is an old idea with a new coat of paint.

Here’s a relevant tidbit from the Wayback Machine: In March 2002 I covered the IMN Forum on Carrier Hotels and Internet Data Centers in New York. One of the panels focused on outsourcing, and where it might be headed. Here’s an excerpt:

Data Center Knowledge article

Business impact analysis for SMBs

Conducting a business impact analysis (BIA) is often viewed as an exercise that is exclusive to enterprise-class organizations with seemingly limitless funds for consulting services. Large consulting firms often spend months mapping every business process and interviewing numerous business unit representatives to come up with sophisticated financial loss projection charts.

These projects are time-consuming and costly because of the complexity of large companies, which rely on dozens of core functions and sometimes hundreds of support functions. Take for example an airline that has a reservation system, check-in, baggage handling, refueling, maintenance, in-flight catering, customer service, marketing and the multitude of secondary functions that support the core business activity. Now try to imagine the impact of the interruption of one or many of these functions on the organization as whole; what are the immediate financial losses, cumulative losses and long-term effects?

Search Disaster Recovery article

Cummins Hikes Prices on Diesel Generators

The price of diesel generators from Cummins Power Generation (CMI) is going up. Cummins said today that it will raise prices by 2 to 7 percent on commercial generator set products between 15 kW and 2700 kW as of Jan. 1, 2009. The company cited “rising commodity and fuel prices as well as the consequence of the current industry dynamics.”

Data Center Knowledge article

Pricing, power and cooling in the data center

A consulting firm we work with recently brought 4 CIOs in to talk about the issues that they were facing with regards to external data centers.

There were two overriding issues that ALL FOUR CIOs expressed:

They never knew from month to month what the billing would be. Pricing was convoluted, confusing and variable.

All four were running up against power and cooling constraints in their existing data centers. Either they were promised densities that could not be delivered, or the facility was out of power and unwilling or unable to add more.

Moral: be wary if your provider's pricing is confusing. Get firm commitments on power densities and make sure you have alternative strategies in place with regards to power and cooling.

Here's Gartner's recent take on the power and cooling issues we face today.

STAMFORD, Conn., October 2, 2007 — By 2011, more than 70 percent of U.S. enterprise data centers will face tangible disruptions related to energy consumption, floor space, and/or costs, according to Gartner, Inc. In fact, during the next five years, most U.S. enterprise data centers will spend as much on energy (power and cooling) as they will on hardware infrastructure.

“CIOs of large U.S. organizations must prepare for a period of rapid changes in their data centers,” said Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner. “This disruption will be accompanied by a significant increase in capital and operational expenditures. Failure to respond quickly and appropriately to the changing market conditions and technologies will result in needlessly high energy bills, expensive service contracts and delays in implementing new technologies.”

Gartner article

RFID in the Data Center

Bank of America said last week that it is using radio frequency identification chips (RFID) to keep track of servers and other IT equipment, and is working to advance a standard for RFID tracking in financial data centers. The huge bank, which just got even bigger with its acquisition of Merrill Lynch, has deployed RFID in 14 of its 28 data centers, the company told RFID Journal (link via Zero Downtime).

RFID allows information to be stored and retrieved on small devices called RFID tags, The technology is used in enterprise supply chain management, allowing companies to keep track of the location and status of products and orders. RFID has obvious utility in data center consolidations and migrations and in managing server sprawl in large organizations.

Data Center Knowledge article

The Next Huge Security Threat: Web Applications

Software as a service may be on the rise, but so are security threats targeted at loopholes in application code. Here are some application security strategies from industry experts, with a closer look at one area not generally associated with security and information technology management--insurance.

As companies flock to software-as-a-service (SaaS) and design their own Web-based applications to take advantage of an always-on and always-accessible enterprise, they're also opening themselves to a formidable security threat, many experts believe.

Baseline article

IT Q3 Report Card: Financial Crisis Impacting IT Decision-Making

How is IT in general holding up in this volatile environment, and what are the prospects of various sectors going forward? That's what everyone wants to know, and about which few people are willing to go out on a limb and make predictions.

OK, so we've endured about 60 days of the zig-zagging U.S. macroeconomy, and now we have a number of quarterly financial reports to view as early evidence about how bad the damage may be. How is IT in general holding up in this volatile environment, and what are the prospects of various sectors going forward? That's what everyone wants to know, and about which few people are willing to go out on a limb and make predictions.

eWeek Article

Adjusting your budget in a volatile economy

CIO Jeff Rowley hashed over his 2009 IT budget with his business partners more than he ever has before. In his case, the business is the hurting state of Ohio, facing a 2009 budget deficit of between $733 million to more than $1 billion. Rowley is CIO of the state's Department of Natural Resources, overseeing an annual IT budget that hovers around $9 million.

His charge is to support his department's initiatives more efficiently and spend less doing it. Ohio's departments have already taken two across-the-board cost cuts, Rowley said, but budget talks have taken a different turn from past years.

SearchCIO article

Cutting power bill isn’t best result of data center efficiency

It might seem illogical, but the best savings from being efficient in your data center can’t necessarily be seen on the power bill.

That was one of the main points Ken Brill, founder and executive director of The Uptime Institute, hammered home in his presentation at Data Center Decisions last week. His keynote, entitled “Revolutionizing Data Center Efficiency,” tied everything back to the most important thing: the almighty dollar.

So where does the big savings come from? It comes from being able to hold off on building a new, expensive data center, the price tag on which can easily exceed $100 million if you’re talking about a big facility.

IT Knowledge Exchange article

Virtualizing your data protection - it ain't no cakewalk and takes a lot more than grabbing another copy of back-u-up 6.0

A colleague (Jeff Byrne) and I recently did a webcast over on InfoStor about storage issues surrounding server virtualization. On the tail end of that session, we received a number of questions about data protection in virtual environments. That in and of itself isn't necessarily news - optimal virtual server backup is without a doubt confusing and somewhat frustrating. But the fact that there are always questions around protection, and that there are no clear answers applicable across every situation, is leading me to shift my perspective a bit.

ComputerWorld article

Down To Business: The Death Of The CIO (And Other Cautionary Tales)

Remember the stock market experts who wrote books years ago predicting the Dow would surpass 30,000, 36,000, 40,000 in no time? Better for them that you don't remember. As a customer reviewer on Amazon.com recently remarked about one of those blowhards: "At least I'm reassured that this guy's probably now living in a cardboard box under an overpass, and sleeping in a polyester leisure suit that he ripped off from the Salvation Army."

If you're going to venture over the top with your predictions, it pays to stay within the same ZIP code of reality. Ask Nicholas Carr, whose "IT Doesn't Matter" article in the May 2003 issue of the Harvard Business Review took on the less muscular title Does IT Matter? when he expanded it for a book. Carr's still taken seriously as an author and keynote speaker because he's been willing to temper his controversial positions on a variety of technology subjects--from cloud computing to the digital enterprise--when evidence has suggested the underlying issues aren't so black and white

Information Week article

Traditional disaster recovery test models outgrow usefulness

Most CIOs at enterprise-level companies are in on the dirty little secret of disaster recovery (DR) testing: The traditional DR test method is outgrowing its usefulness. The complexity of today's environments makes true simulation of recovery from a disaster quite difficult.

CIOs aren't abandoning the method -- there are as yet few alternatives -- but analysts say they would be wise to incrementally increase the scope of testing and look to tools to monitor software configuration changes to increase effectiveness.

SearchCIO article

Gotcha! How virtualization savings can vanish

As a consultant at Accenture, Jay Corn has seen IT organizations plan a virtualization deployment to drive down server operating costs - and then realize that they would achieve zero cost savings.

Here's the problem: If you host your servers at a colocation facility, chances are the service provider - not you - will get all of the benefits. The problem lies in the pricing models. "They still look it as one server image and they don't care if it's virtual or physical - they charge the same for it. That's definitely a big gotcha," he says.

ComputerWorld article

Google Apps Outages Officially a Part of Our Lives

Google's Gmail suffers an outage, while the search engine's Start Page suffers a bug, disconnecting users from their content. The blips cast another pall over SAAS, cloud computing and Web services at large. We might be able to depend on SAAS, but we must take additional measures to make sure all of the data we transact via desktops and computers is made redundant.

Update: There is a harried Google Apps adviser named Mark whose life I don't envy. Once, sometimes twice a month it seems, he gets to try to sooth angry users of Google Apps, the search engine's Web-based applications that enable collaboration via e-mail, word processing and spreadsheet documents.

eWeek article

Capacity planning and the cloud

One of the problems that cloud computing is trying to solve is the issue of dealing with capacity planning for companies and the services that they offer. Current datacenters for individual companies, and where relevant, for entire websites, are designed to cope with a particular peak load.

The problem with this model is that it means that a large number of machines may sit relatively idle while waiting for the traffic spike that causes them to be used. Meanwhile, these machines are sucking power, wasting management cycles, and ultimately iterating over their own lifespan waiting to be used. Altogether, it's a waste of time and resources on a whole number of levels.

ComputerWorld Article

Thinking outside the case: running naked servers

When it comes to data center metrics the one most often talked about is square footage. Nobody ever announces that they've built a facility with Y-tons of cooling, or Z-Megawatts. The first metric quoted is X-square feet. Talk to any data center manager however and they'll tell you that floor space is completely irrelevant these days. It only matters to the real estate people. All that matters to the rest of us is power and cooling - Watts per square foot. How much space you have available is nowhere near as important as what you can actually do with it.
If you look at your data center with a fresh eye, where is the waste really happening?

Serverspecs article

Cloud computing is stupidity says GNU guru Richard Stallman

Mark Fricker at RPM Technologies brought this article to our attention. Great insight by Richard Stallman.

I just ran across an article in the Guardian (UK) in which GNU creator (and founder of the Free Software Foundation) Richard Stallman minces no words about the cloud computing phenomenon, calling it a trap. TechRepublic bloggers have written skeptically about the concept, especially where it concerns privacy and security issues, and others have reported on particular cloud initiatives such as those of Google and Amazon.

Stallman's comments to the Guardian go beyond merely skeptical, however: It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign.

Tech Republic article

Is downtime more frequent, or more visible?

Are leading Internet sites reliable enough? The New York Times examines web downtime today in a front-page story, which focuses on users' growing reliance upon web services. "Now the Web is an irreplaceable part of daily life, and Internet companies have plans to make us even more dependent on it," writes Brad Stone. "The problem is that this ideal requires Web services to be available around the clock - and even the Internet's biggest companies sometimes have trouble making that happen."

Data Center Knowledge Article

Top disaster recovery budget wasters

In these days of extremely tight budgets and ever-increasing energy and transportation costs, who would waste money? You have to look at your spending from various angles to see where you may have wasted dollars. For example, refusing to spend money on technologies that can reduce your disaster recovery (DR) deployment and testing costs actually wastes money. This is the first of the top DR budget wasters discussed in this tip. Not virtualizing your data center: Virtualization can save you money in DR maintenance and testing. I have talked to many customers who have leveraged virtualization to build DR solutions, even with applications that are not readily consolidated. In other words, they have implemented a 1:1 consolidation ratio just to gain the benefits of virtualization's mobility to simplify DR.

Serverspecs article

What does downtime cost your company?

Our client's most basic needs always come back to risk mitigation and/or uptime. What does downtime cost your business?

Is it lost sales?

Is it cash flow? Many companies cannot bill without their systems.

Does downtime prevent you from making your products or delivering your services?

Does downtime cost you credibility with your clients?

How many of you do background checks on your IT employees?

The Washington Post has an excellent article today regarding the City of San Francisco/Terry Childs debacle. Its findings appear to confirm suspicions regarding both Mr. Childs' true intentions as well as the City's outright ineptitude.

First, the findings on Mr. Childs, straight from the Post:
Terry Childs, 43, was arrested July 13 at his suburban home, where police found $10,000 in cash, diagrams of the city-county computer network, a co-worker's access card, a loaded 9mm magazine and several loose .45-caliber rounds. Under the user name Maggot617, he hijacked the system and refused to turn over passwords for the network, which superiors belatedly discovered only he controlled

ComputerWorld Article

Raised Floor versus Solid Floor

There is an emerging trend away from raised floor in many large scale data centers. The cost of build out and maintenance for raised floor is driving many organizations to a solid floor data center environment.
Most data center equipment is now cooled from front to back, so cooling from the bottom is no longer needed. A number of different hot spot management techniques can be employed to solve the problem of density related heat.
What's your opinion of raised floor? We'd love to hear about it.

A new roof for a new data center

Lifeline Data Centers continues work on the Eastgate Mall. The crew is about a third done with the installation of new membrane roof for the former Wassons/Burlington Coat Factory building. The bright white membrane will not only protect the data center from leaks, it also will reflect heat from sunlight. The new roofing system is also tornado proof. Once the roof is finished, the inside build out will resume on the first 30,000 square feet of data center. The target availability date is still November 1, 2008.

Lifeline Data Centers Begins Construction at the Eastgate Consumer Mall Campus

Indianapolis, Indiana - After removing over 2,400 cubic yards of debris, Lifeline Data Centers ended demolition and began construction today on its new data center and office facility at the former Eastgate Consumer Mall in Indianapolis. Lifeline is transforming the 40-acre, former retail mall into 450,000 square feet of data center space supported by 200,000 square feet of office space. The project is a partnership between the principles of Lifeline Data Centers and Marvin Slomowitz, President of Mark Development in Kingston, PA.

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard joined Lifeline today in the construction ceremony. "We are confident that Lifeline will make an excellent corporate neighbor since their goal is to rebuild the grounds by restoring the mall structure, removing most of the parking lot and returning it to green space, bringing high-tech jobs to the area, and building new structures that will add more tax base to the Warren Township area."

Alex Carroll, co-owner of Lifeline, said, "The Eastgate facility is designed to house primary or secondary computer room space for large and small companies from all over the nation. Lifeline is also providing office and storage space in addition to the data center facilities so companies can bring Information Technology staff and staging to a single campus environment. Indianapolis offers a central geographic location, some of the lowest power rates in the nation, a favorable construction climate and the most affordable housing in the top fifty markets. The Eastgate facility provides additional infrastructure that makes Indianapolis more attractive to companies looking to relocate their business. "

Industry trends show that both large and small companies continue to outsource their computer data center facilities. Based on a recent study conducted by Trinity Information Systems, half of all companies will relocate or outsource some of their data centers or computer applications in the next five years. American Power Conversion (APC) believes that in the next five years, 90% of all companies will experience at least one interruption in computer operations because of power limitations, power faults, or power availability. Companies that outsource the facilities side of their computer operations can significantly reduce these risks.

Lifeline's first phase of the build out includes fourth quarter 2008 availability of the first 60,000 square feet of data center floor space inside the former mall. The remaining mall space will be refit as customized office space and staging/storage facilities for data center clients' Information Technology staff and employees. Lifeline will then build free-standing tornado resistant-buildings to bring the total data center space to 450,000 square feet. Rich Banta, co-owner of Lifeline, said "Lifeline builds all hardened data center facilities to the 99.995% uptime and TIA-942 specifications. There are no single points of failure for power, cooling, or data connectivity." Lifeline also plans a green campus environment by employing hydrogen-assisted diesel generators, reflective roof technologies, returning of old parking lots to green space, as well as implementing innovative HVAC technologies. Lifeline’s total investment in the project will be $50 million.

Lifeline secured financing for this expansion from M&I Bank in Indianapolis. "M&I Bank is excited to be involved in this project. Lifeline Data Centers has been a valued customer of our bank and we expect an overwhelming success," stated Tim Massey, Executive Vice President of M&I Bank.

Why Indianapolis is the ideal place for your data center

If you're looking for the best place to locate your new production data center, or if you're looking for a secondary data center site, Indianapolis has a unique combination of features that make it an ideal location for your next data center facility.

At about a nickel a KW, Indianapolis has some of the least expensive power in the country.

The construction codes and the freedom to use non-union labor make Indy an great place to build facilities.

Indianapolis is located in the heart of the United States. This central location is a day's drive from half of the US population.

The central location also provides for an abundance of telecommunications fiber. Over 20 carriers offer connectivity in the Indianapolis area.

If you're considering moving employees along with your data center, Indy has the lowest cost of living in the top 50 US markets. Housing, food and income taxes are a bargain in Indy.

Finally, Indy is home to Lifeline Data Centers, a carrier neutral facility that provides large scale, flexible data center space. Lifeline is building 450,000 square feet of data center facilities support by 200,000 square feet of office space and 50,000 square feet of staging and storage space. If you're looking for data center space, look to Lifeline Data Centers in Indianapolis.

The transformation of the Eastgate Mall by Lifeline Data Centers

Thanks to all for the e-mails, notes and phone calls of congratulations regarding Lifeline's new data center and office facility in the former Eastgate mall. We've received national press coverage in IT and real estate publications. Interest is high.

Work progresses well as we have removed about 10 40-ton dumpsters of trash with another 20 or so dumpsters to go. Job one is converting the old Burlington Coat Factory into hardened computer room facilities. We will have that data center space available in November 2008.

We are also refitting much of the mall into low cost office space for clients who maintain data center space with us. If your company needs quality computer room facilities and you could use office space as well, give us a call. If your company is running out of space and you need to move your IT folks along with your equipment, Lifeline may be a great solution.

Thanks also to all the neighborhood groups who have been so supportive throughout this project. We'll have an open house in the fourth quarter so you'll be able to see what's going on at the old mall.

Lifeline Data Centers completes purchase of the Eastgate Consumer Mall

Indianapolis, Indiana - Lifeline Data Centers announced today the completion of the purchase of the former Eastgate Consumer Mall in Indianapolis. Lifeline will transform the 40-acre, 370,000 square foot former retail mall into 450,000 square feet of data center space supported by 200,000 square feet of office space. The acquisition is a partnership between the principles of Lifeline Data Centers and Marvin Slomowitz, President of Mark Development in Kingston, PA.

Alex Carroll, co-owner of Lifeline, said, "Businesses across the nation have a new alternative for large scale data center space. Lifeline Data Centers can now provide computer data center facilities, office space, and access to the major telecommunications carriers. Indianapolis offers a central geographic location, some of the lowest power rates in the nation, a favorable construction climate and the most affordable housing in the top fifty markets. Whether companies are looking for a primary data center location or a disaster recovery site, Lifeline's new Indianapolis facility is an excellent choice."

Industry trends show that both large and small companies continue to outsource their computer data center facilities. Based on a recent study conducted by Trinity Information Systems, half of all data centers will relocate or outsource some of their computer applications in the next five years. American Power Conversion (APC) believes that in the next five years, 90% of all companies will experience at least one interruption in computer operations because of power limitations, power faults, or power availability. Companies that outsource the facilities side of their computer operations can significantly reduce these risks.

Lifeline's first phase of the build out includes fourth quarter 2008 availability of 60,000 square feet of data center floor space inside the former mall. The remaining mall space will be refit as customized office space for data center clients' Information Technology staff and employees. Lifeline will build free-standing tornado resistant-buildings to bring the total data center space to 450,000 square feet. Rich Banta, co-owner of Lifeline, said "Lifeline builds all hardened data center facilities to the Uptime Institute Hybrid Tier IV and TIA-942 specifications. There are no single points of failure for power, cooling, or data connectivity." Lifeline also plans a green campus environment by employing hydrogen-assisted diesel generators, reflective roof technologies, returning of old parking lots to green space, as well as implementing innovative HVAC technologies.

Greg Ballard, Mayor of Indianapolis, commented "We are confident that Lifeline will make an excellent corporate neighbor since their goal is to rebuild the grounds by restoring the mall structure, removing most of the parking lot and returning it to green space, bringing high-tech jobs to the area, and building new structures that will add more tax base to the Warren Township area."

Lifeline secured financing for this expansion from M&I Bank in Indianapolis. "M&I Bank is excited to be involved in this project. Lifeline Data Centers has been a valued customer of our bank and we expect an overwhelming success," stated Tim Massey, Executive Vice President of M&I Bank.

About Lifeline Data Centers:
Lifeline Data Centers, LLC is an Indianapolis based company that provides computer room facilities for public, private and government clients. Lifeline provides the highest quality hardened data center facilities, access to multiple telecommunications providers, and technology office space. Clients use Lifeline to protect their primary and backup computer systems, and to avoid the costs of building their own computer room facilities. Lifeline also provides managed services including remote backup, regular maintenance and emergency services.

Welcome to the new Lifeline Data Centers

Lifeline welcomes you to its new web presence. Please look around and comment on our changes.