The next thing that will hit the Data Center Companies, The Truth, The Reality of where their path leads to

I have been writing about a bunch of other things besides data centers.  In some ways what gets discussed in the media about data centers is getting old and boring.  So what if Microsoft builds a data center in Finland as part of the acquisition of Nokia's phone devices?  $250 mil spent over years is probably a data center in the 10-15MW range with 40% spend on the data center, 40% spent on the equipment and 20% for various other costs to run the data center.  Data centers are now discussed broadly in the media.  The data center media has morphed as the people have changed jobs or companies have been acquired.

What is up with the data center industry?  6 months ago I would say the big are getting bigger, the small are getting smaller, and the middle is keeping quiet as they find it harder to do business.

What do I say now?  The truth in data centers will be driving many changes in data centers.  Those who contribute to hype will decrease.  To be cost competitive, you need to save money.  But making people do more with less, is not necessarily the best way long term if designs are not well thought out.  To optimize a solution overall, you need to see the truth of what works and what doesn't.  Shaving costs can create a whack-a-mole problem.  I have heard of people who reduce their construction costs by eliminating work typically done and making it part of the operations team.  Or designs that sacrifice best practices in operation, increasing operating costs and reduces availability.

I have heard rumblings of changes.  Data Centers are not easy to run, they can be temperamental if not designed right.

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.” 
― Marilyn Monroe

 

Here are a few more quotes of the "truth" that can be applied to data centers.

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” 
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” 
― Gloria Steinem

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” 
― Aldous Huxley, Complete Essays 2, 1926-29

Jeff Bezos invests in reinventing the Physics of the newspaper business buying Washington Post

Jeff Bezos has spent $250 mil of his own money to buy the Washington Post.

The LA Times discusses the possibility of Jeff Bezos creating a new business model for newspapers.

Washington Post buy: Can Jeff Bezos fix newspapers' business model?

Amazon's Jeff Bezos, buyer of the Washington Post, has shown success at experimentation and great patience about turning a profit.

I've worked on Publishing technologies way too long, starting in 1987 on displays, printers, fonts at Apple, then continued working on the publishing technologies at Microsoft.  Back in 1997 Bill Gates was focused on winning the battle for publishing vs. Apple.  Microsoft didn't win that battle.  Google changed the game sucking the air out of print advertising model.

Jeff Bezos in 1994 started Amazon.com and has seen the transition of Books and DVDs to digital. While this all going on Jeff has got an insider's look at the business models of media companies.  Jeff Bezos started college as a physicists and switched to computer science.

Bezos often showed intense scientific interests. He rigged an electric alarm to keep his younger siblings out of his room.^{[citation needed]} The family moved toMiami, Florida, where Bezos attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School. While in high school, he attended the Student Science Training Program at the University of Florida, receiving a Silver Knight Award in 1982.^[9] He was high school valedictorian.^[10] He attended Princeton University, with an intention to study physics, but soon returned to his love of computers and graduated summa cum laude, with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in electrical engineering and computer science. While at Princeton, he was elected to the honor societies Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. He also served as the President of the Princeton chapter of the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space.^[11]

Jeff's love to understand how things work and make them better is what he did to retail.  Why can't he do the same with newspapers.  Once he figures out newspapers he can move on to other things that shape human perception.

Here is a progressive view of journalism.

So then what the hell is journalism?

It is a service. It is a service whose end, again, is an informed public. For my entrepreneurial journalism students, I give them a broad umbrella of a definition: Journalism helps communities organize their knowledge so they can better organize themselves.

Thus anything that reliably serves the end of an informed community is journalism. Anyone can help do that. The true journalist should want anyone to join the task. That, in the end, is why I wrote Public Parts: because I celebrate the value that rises from publicness, from the ability of anyone to share what he or she knows with everyone and the ethic that says sharing is a generous and social act and transparency should be the default for our institutions.

Is there a role for people to help in that process? Absolutely. I say that organizations can first help enable the flow and collection of information, which can now occur without them, by offering platforms for communities to share what they know. Next, I say that someone is often needed to add value to that process by:
* asking the questions that are not answered in the flow,
* verifying facts,
* debunking rumors,
* adding context, explanation, and background,
* providing functionality that enables sharing,
* organizing efforts to collaborate by communities, witnesses, experts.

When IT is abundant, The focus is shifting to the information and how well things work

HBR has a guest post by the CEO of Box, Aaron Levie.  The article starts by referring to Nicholas Carr's infamous IT doesn't matter post.

How to Compete When IT Is Abundant

by Aaron Levie  |  11:00 AM June 26, 2013

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"You only gain an edge over rivals by having or doing something that they can't have or do," wrote Nicholas Carr ten years ago in his controversial HBR article, "IT Doesn't Matter."

Carr predicted that an organization's ability to compete through investing in information technology was about to change dramatically. When "the core functions of IT — data storage, data processing, and data transport — have become available and affordable to all," he wrote, IT would cease to be a source of competitive advantage.

Aaron closes with the point of IT moving from scarcity to abundance and competitive advantage.

In this transition from a world of IT scarcity to abundance, competitive advantage has little to do with unique access to technology, and everything to do with unique access to — and use of — information. When technology is near-ubiquitous, it's the connection between people and information that drives business forward. Organizations that capitalize on this trend will ensure that as information eats the enterprise, they'll be the ones satiated.

Here is another way to look at.  The early days of IT was just getting things to work.  The Cloud is showing how to get things to work at scale so you can supply the same service to a lot more people.  So, it is no longer a question of whether IT systems work.  The question has shifted to how well does IT work for my business?

The old world of IT help the keys to technology.  With the cloud users have choice and they'll take their information to where they can get the best service.  

IT needs to make a shift to being a business enabler to survive.  If IT lives in the old risks averse world users will continue to look for ways to sidestep the corporate policies.

As software eats the world, information is eating the enterprise. Access to the right information at the right time from anywhere will transform every business and every industry. Competitiveness in IT will come from connecting employees and partners in meaningful ways to bring products to market faster (how does a supply chain process shrink from days to minutes?), supporting customers with new experiences (can my thermostat talk to my energy provider?), and surfacing the right people and knowledge to generate better ideas (how do I find experts across my organization that I'm not connected to?).

Long Term Customer Satisfaction in a Data Center who are you focused on?

Here is a question.  Who are you focused on if you want to achieve long term customer satisfaction of a Data Center build or lease?

Most would focus on the decision makers of the initial project.  But, too many times the people who start the project are not the ones who live with the decision made.  And worse case the team making the initial data center choices are optimizing for their budget and internal visibility vs. the long term cost, operations, and availability of the data center.  Any problems in operations can easily be diverted by saying that the operations team is at fault, and the design was perfect.

I always watch out for those who make it seem like their designs are perfect and don't have issues.  Any good design has trade-offs.  And, some of those trade-offs may not be the ones you may make.  A high availability data center will have higher costs to build and operate.  An energy efficient design may have higher inlet temperatures which makes it hard for legacy systems to be accommodated.  There is no perfect car.  Especially for everyone.  There are no perfect data centers.  People are most proud of their acquisition within the first months and they talk about how it is the best data center as if they are Donald Trump showing his latest building.  After a year the novelty wears off.  

Except…  There are a set of people that will show off their data center years after it was commissioned.

Who?  The operations team who take pride in their work.  Those who had an active role during construction and have a loud voice in operations are way more likely to be proud of their data centers.  These are the people who will tell their peers about the vendors used, procedures, best practices, and the issues they have run into.  

If people spend more time focusing on the data center operations team then there is a good chance you'll increase customer satisfaction.

In the data center industry the big are getting bigger.  The small are folding their operations into the cloud.  The middle is silent as they get squeezed in markets, margin, and find it hard to compete. In this shift, the role of data center operations will grow.

Can you see the influence and factions in the data center industry?

Part of what I have an interesting time is discussing the influence and factions in the data center industry.  It is hard to discuss the specifics in a blog entry especially when I want to build on a public disclosure.  I started writing this post a couple of days ago and didn't decide to publish until Chris Crosby threw up his inbreeding post.

 For our industry to continue to grow and mature we need to better understand the needs, not the buzzword wants, of our customers. At a time when we should be more open as an industry, it seems that we are only becoming more insular. While this may make us better banjo players, it doesn’t help us improve the product that we offer to our customers in any meaningful way.

So, let me discuss ideas from my own observations and general concepts.

I just posted on my 10 data center journey.  And one of the top criteria for attending an event is how is easy it to network.  Most conferences I exchange maybe 20 business cards at the most, many times only 10 or less.  When going to sessions, I'll quietly watching from a corner spot or if I want to really focus on the presenters I got up front where I can take pictures and I am not distracted by the audience.

One of the principles I use is to focus on location.  When I go to bfast I look for who is there and where is a good spot to see the people coming in for Bfast.  This allows me to see many people coming in and connect with people as they scope where to sit.  When I go to the bar I look for friends already there and where is a good place to get an overall view of the people.  When I go to receptions, I go early and look for the best table to sit/stand to watch the people.  If you try to wander around to talk to the people it can be frustrating and draining.  My strategy is to find the best spots to hang with some of the best people and just watch what happens.

The funny thing about this strategy is when you apply it to social situations it can look like you are uncomfortable as you don't move around and mingle.  You sit/stand and watch.  I've been lectured by my wife and her friends that I am introverted and it is hard for people to know me.  At 7x24 Exchange I was telling one of my friends this story, and he laughed so hard that I was being accused of being anti-social, introverted, and hard to talk to.  Well the truth is sometimes when I do get in social situations and I am not in a conversation, then I'll start working on thought experiments designing new features, iterating on different ways to solve the problem, more information I need, and I am perfectly happy just sipping on my wine watching people.  

Back to data center conferences, part of the observation is seeing those groups who stick together as a company.  I went to one social in LV at a hotel suite during Data Center World.  I got there mid party, which made it hard to find the right spot to watch people. I saw a friend by the food in the corner away from all the people and chatted.  The host came on by and we were poking of fun of the guys who were wearing the company polo shirts all collected together.  <ALERT: possible inbreed group.>  Then he said it was really hot as he came over to try and turn down the thermostat which was already set to 60 degrees.  I figured out I was in the 2 x 4 ft section of the suite that was comfortable as I was right next to the air conditioning vent.  New lesson, sometimes the best spot to be in a crowded party is where the air conditioning vents.  The cool air can work well to get people to come by and cool off.

When a large group of company employees from a vendor are together, then the thing to watch is their clients are most likely close by or their suppliers that they favor.  Seeing who interacts with who and spends time together gets you an idea who can work together.  One of the biggest mistakes made is when suppliers are picked that really don't get along with each other.  Sometimes worse case they really hate each other, and given the client has made the choices, they can't do anything about it.

There are those who are hunting for new business which is rarely successful, but often enough that some sales people will interject themselves wherever they think they have something they can.  This is when I am glad that I don't buy anything which means people leave me alone.  And, being a blogger it can work to scare off people who don't want to talk to press.  Sometimes I wonder if my friends use my press shield capabilities to keep people away.  :-)  Notice how the press badges are usually red.  Warning.  Don't talk to this person unless you are press trained and be careful what you say.

Some people are looking for new jobs.  At some point there are conversations on who has changed jobs, who is looking, who is hiring.  Do you see the talent?  <squirrel>  Who has had a reorganization which disrupts staff and execution.