Checked out Mike Manos blog and nothing new, but he has his new job listed.

About Michael Manos

Senior Vice President

Digital Realty Trust

A seasoned Technology Management executive with over 15 years of management experience and technical industry certifications with a strong background in data center management, information technology platforms, network architecture, service management (ITIL) and telecommunication technologies.

Mike has an extensive IT-based consulting and professional service background which includes business practice management with revenue generation responsibilities which flavors a strong advocacy of technology and process integration.

Past examples of this technology and process integration have been recognized by leading analyst firms including The Gartner Group and Meta Group. This integration experience is augmented by considerable systems development experience in both traditional systems development environments and web-based development platforms.

Currently responsible for the global data center design, construction, ongoing operations and professional services for Digital Realty Trust, his past roles include similar responsibilities at Microsoft Corporation, and leadership roles at Walt Disney, Rhythms NetConnections, and Nuclio Corporation (now part of Sun Microsystems).

And LinkedIn has him listed as SR VP Digital Realty Trust

Michael Manos

Senior Vice President at Digital Realty Trust

Greater Seattle Area

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It looks like May has come early as Microsoft’s post says he leaves in early May.

As you may have already read, Mike Manos will be leaving Microsoft in early May to return to Chicago and take a leadership position with Digital Realty Trust.

Mike congratulations on your starting your new job.

Peter Principle is a classic and has reached 40 years.

The Peter Principle is the principle that "In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence." While formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1968 book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise which also introduced the "salutary science of Hierarchiology", "inadvertently founded" by Peter, the principle has real validity. It holds that in a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently. Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (their "level of incompetence"), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions. Peter's Corollary states that "in time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out his duties" and adds that "work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence".

Businesweek has an article about hitting 40.

The Peter Principle Lives

Now 40, The Peter Principle resonates even more today, when a lust for accomplishment has led an unprecedented level of incompetence

Illustration by Richard Mia

By Robert I. Sutton

The Peter Principle, about to be reissued in a 40th anniversary edition, was a best seller when it was first published. A satiric treatise on workplace incompetence, it touched a nerve with readers because it was so funny. And so true. Much like the film Office Space, NBC's The Office, and Scott Adams' Dilbert comic strips, this book by Laurence J. Peter (a former teacher) and Raymond Hull (a playwright) captured the twisted logic of workplaces—tapping into how ridiculous they feel to insiders. It gleefully emitted a cloud of jargon monoxide and absurd advice as it reached its famous main conclusion: "In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence."

There are good ideas on how to run green programs in the data center.

The cure for our malady? We should return to what Dr. Peter wanted: rewarding ordinary competence and being wary of feats that come too easily. Perhaps the late Ray Kroc is the right role model here. One of his first steps in building the McDonald's empire was to run his own outlet—he cooked, cleaned bathrooms, picked up the trash. The focus on doing ordinary things well was, he believed, key to McDonald's success.

Simple competence was central, too, for former U.S. Marine Lieutenant Donovan Campbell, who led a platoon in bloody street battles in Iraq. As Campbell's account, Joker One, tells us, he earned his men's respect and protected them through simple acts: training them to get in and out of a Humvee quickly, reminding them to eat, and arguing with superiors when those under his command were unnecessarily put in harm's way.

Finally, consider how Captain Chesley Sullenberger III explained his astounding emergency landing of US Airways (LCC) Flight 1549 in New York's Hudson River in January. "I know I speak for the entire crew when I tell you we were simply doing the jobs we were trained to do," he said. As Dr. Peter might have observed, there were no pretenders, blowhards, or shared delusions that day, just the deftly coordinated actions of people who had not reached their level of incompetence.

Keep this last sentence in mind to judge how your green programs are working.

As Dr. Peter might have observed, there were no pretenders, blowhards, or shared delusions that day, just the deftly coordinated actions of people who had not reached their level of incompetence.

Rackable has a press release with a focus on the Media and Entertainment Industry and Green IT.

NEW STUDY SHOWS IT DEPARTMENTS IN DIGITAL MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY LACKING ACTION IN THEIR QUEST TO GO GREEN

Image-Conscious Industry More Aware Due to Press, Celebrities, and Consumer Demand to Go Green, According to BPM Forum, Rackable Systems and Intel Report

PALO ALTO, CA (February 24, 2009) — A nearly unanimous 99 percent of IT professionals feel that it is important for their digital media & entertainment industry-related businesses to reduce their carbon footprint, and most are becoming much more aware of ecological issues due to recent press, celebrity involvement, and consumer demand. Despite these pressures, 76 percent give the industry average or poor grades in their progress towards embracing so-called Think Eco-Logical processes and practices.

These are among the many findings in an executive report: “Think Eco-Logical – IT Sustainability Imperatives in Digital Media & Entertainment Business” by The BPM Forum and its Global Renewable Energy and Environmental Network (GREEN) in conjunction with Rackable Systems (NASDAQ: RACK) and Intel, around a comprehensive online survey and executive dialogs including insights from over 100 IT professionals. The new report is part of a Think Eco-Logical initiative to educate companies on the need to address both the environmental side (Eco) of IT sustainability imperatives and the economics (Logical) of achieving environmental efficiencies in the data center.

Didn’t know California’s film industry is the state’s 2nd largest Polluter.

According to a UCLA study, California’s film industry is the state’s second largest polluter, with only the oil industry having a greater negative impact on the environment. However, according to the BPM Forum study, more than 53 percent of companies don’t have or don’t know if they have a corporate sustainability agenda in place. And lack of awareness of business benefits was identified as the top challenge to environmental sustainability.

Here are a few facts from their report.

• 88 percent say it’s important to have Eco-Logical servers

• 90 percent have begun to implement Think Eco-Logical activities to some extent in their organization

• Top potential benefits of ecological practices are reduced power/cooling costs (79 percent), social responsibility (73 percent), and positive PR (62 percent)

• 80 percent say the digital media & entertainment industry is more sensitized towards the move to Thinking Eco-Logical than they were a year ago

The Chronicle of Higher Education writes on Stanford Universities green data center efforts. Nothing really new, but nice to see that this issue has made it into a university publication.

Here are some nuggets.

Now the pipes that supply cold water to help keep the servers cool are running at full capacity. The building has trouble taking in the huge amounts of electricity that modern-day servers require. For each dollar spent on computers, the center must spend an equal amount of money to build the power and cooling systems to keep them running.

That cost "has been killing us," says Richard P. Mount, the center's head of scientific computing. The price of storing and processing data, in fact, is hurting every college and university in the country.

…

In response, some institutions are embracing greener technologies, as much to keep costs down as to help the environment. Stanford is moving toward building a new center that uses outside air instead of chilled water, and it hopes to save just over $3-million per year. "Arguably, this pays for itself," says Phil Reese, the university's faculty and research computing strategist. "There's not many arguments you can give that are that strong." And there are other steps, like consolidating servers and outsourcing services, that are less expensive than building a new facility and reduce data's budget-devouring appetite, computer experts told The Chronicle.

…

and, here is a summary of the Stanford University Problem.

At Stanford, leaders realized the depth of the problem when plans for every new major building included requests for major computing facilities inside of them, says Mr. Reese. The requests were symptomatic of a larger problem that plagues many institutions, Mr. Reese says: Data centers are spread out across the campus, making it more difficult to ensure that the computing facilities are energy efficient.

In response, the university is moving toward building a new, greener data center off-campus, on the site of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. The new data center would serve the university's research needs as well as take over half of the computing capacity of the linear accelerator itself, alleviating some of its infrastructure problems.

The new facility would be twice as energy efficient as the university's current model, Mr. Reese says. The building is designed to take advantage of Northern California's temperate climate, cooling the servers with circulated outside air instead of using chilled water, which is expensive to cool down. It would also expel the hot air given off by the servers, reducing the need for external cooling.

Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are mentioned as outsourcing alternatives.

Some of the most energy-efficient data centers are those run by technology companies like Google and Microsoft and the online retailer Amazon.com, whose profits depend on finding cost-effective ways to store and process data. In the long term, experts expect many colleges to export much of their operations to companies like these to save money and focus on what they know best.

Already, more than 1,000 colleges have signed up for e-mail service through Google or Microsoft, helping those colleges reduce, if only slightly, their need for on-campus data centers. Despite some concerns about student privacy, many colleges have reported that letting professionals take care of e-mail results in significant savings.

NetworkWorld references an HP study.

Will data centers transform in 2009?

Enterprise IT shops won't be able to fully overhaul in their data centers in 2009

Network/Systems Management Alert By Denise Dubie , Network World , 01/07/2009

Despite the benefits of virtualization and the compact nature of blade servers, many enterprise IT shops won't be able to fully overhaul in their data centers in 2009. A recent HP commissioned survey found that some 20% of 600 technology decision makers plan to initiate a "complete transformation" of their data centers. The remaining 80% intend to implement individual transformation projects including automation (64%), green IT (60%), operations management (59%), virtualization (59%) and business continuity (58%).

The author makes it seem bad only 20% are planning a complete transformation.  I think that is good.  And, in the remaining 80%, 60% plan Green IT projects.