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Geekwire reported on an analysis run by Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.
The full report – “WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY… AND HE IS US: Lessons from Twenty Years of the Kauffman Foundation’s Investments in Venture Capital Funds and The Triumph of Hope over Experience” – can be downloaded here. It is also embedded below.
I am reading the book "Grouped" by Facebook's Paul Adams.
Grouped: How Small Groups of Friends Are the Key to Influence on the Social Web [Book] by Paul Adams in Books
$18 online, $30 nearby
1 reviewBy Paul Adams - Pearson Education, Limited (2011) - Paperback - 216 pages - ISBN 0321804112The web is being rebuilt around people. From travel to news to commerce, businesses are reorienting their efforts around people - around the social behavior of their customers and potential customers. As we traverse across the web, we'll know which of our friends prefer different brands, and this information will be surfaced to us at the most opportune moments - when we're deciding what to buy. In order to be successful in this new social web, businesses will need to understand how people are influenced by their social network. How the people closest to them influence them the most, and how it's more important to focus on small connected groups of friends rather than looking for overly influential individuals. This book pulls together the latest research on influence and social behavior to describe how people are connected, and how ideas and brand messages spread through social networks.
This book is short and has some interesting Quick Tips.
One entry on Paul's blog is here.
Five major shifts
By Paul Adams in MusingLately, I’ve been talking to people about five major shifts that I see happening. Each is big enough to warrant a post of its own, so over the next few days I’ll write about each individually, and then write a post about what it means to think of them in combination. I’ll link to all from this post. In the meantime, here are the five major shifts:
1. The amount of information we can access is increasing exponentially.
2. The web is being rebuilt around people, rather than being built around content.
3. For the first time in humanity, social interaction, and influence, are measurable.
4. Technology is driving a large increase in understanding how we make decisions, and it’s not how we assumed.
5. Mobile technologies (phones, tablets, etc.) will change society in ways we can’t yet predict.
I am biased seeing these five shifts, because I have been busy with some friends to build a service that is adapting to all of these.
Are you ready for the five major shifts?
Google had a crazy idea a year ago, let's share some of our cluster data to the research community. In Jan 2010, Google shared 7 hrs of data.
Google Cluster Data
Posted by Joseph L. Hellerstein, Manager of Google Performance Analytics
Google faces a large number of technical challenges in the evolution of its applications and infrastructure. In particular, as we increase the size of our compute clusters and scale the work that they process, many issues arise in how to schedule the diversity of work that runs on Google systems.
We have distilled these challenges into the following research topics that we feel are interesting to the academic community and important to Google:
- Workload characterizations: How can we characterize Google workloads in a way that readily generates synthetic work that is representative of production workloads so that we can run stand alone benchmarks?
- Predictive models of workload characteristics: What is normal and what is abnormal workload? Are there "signals" that can indicate problems in a time-frame that is possible for automated and/or manual responses?
- New algorithms for machine assignment: How can we assign tasks to machines so that we make best use of machine resources, avoid excess resource contention on machines, and manage power efficiently?
- Scalable management of cell work: How should we design the future cell management system to efficiently visualize work in cells, to aid in problem determination, and to provide automation of management tasks?
Now Google has shared 29 days from 11,000 Servers in a Google Cluster.
More Google Cluster Data
Posted by John Wilkes, Principal Software Engineer
Google has a strong interest in promoting high quality systems research, and we believe that providing information about real-life workloads to the academic community can help.
In support of this we published a small (7-hour) sample of resource-usage information from a Google production cluster in 2010 (research blog on Google Cluster Data). Approximately a dozen researchers at UC Berkeley, CMU, Brown, NCSU, and elsewhere have made use of it.
Recently, we released a larger dataset. It covers a longer period of time (29 days) for a larger cell (about 11k machines) and includes significantly more information, including:
- the original resource requests, to permit scheduling experiments
- request constraints and machine attriibutes
- machine availability and failure events
- some of the reasons for task exits
- (obfuscated) job and job-submitter names, to help identify repeated or related jobs
- more types of usage information
- CPI (cycles per instruction) and memory traffic for some of the machines
Besides the feedback from the the research community, this is a great way for Google to find future hires.
When Verizon announced its acquisition of Terremark I was meeting with Silent Partner's Kevin Francis. We chatted about what it meant to the industry, and he quickly fired off some e-mails to a few others to discuss the implications of Verizon purchasing Terremark and how it affects the industry.
Kevin gave me his 4 reasons why he thinks Verizon bought Terremark. Here is the official Verizon press release if you want to hear the official company line. And where Terremark's data centers are.
Reason #1. What is the most valuable asset Terremark has?
- Control the largest and most strategic Latin American gateway in the US.
just as Google acquired 111 8th Avenue to create a gateway or hub for International carriers and ISPs to meet and interconnect with one another and Google, Verizon gains control of the largest access point for Latin American carriers (and therefore eyeballs) in the United States. This gives them an immediate and frankly scary amount of control over the ingress / egress of US traffic to Latin American eyeballs and vice versa. Global Crossing has traditionally been the one to “own” Latin America based upon their fiber assets in region. Verizon now trumps GX by controlling the main interconnect point and peering fabric of NAP of the Americas.
What is the Terremark Latin American Gateway?
Terremark's flagship facility, the NAP of the Americas®, is one of the most significant telecommunications projects in the world. The Tier-IV facility was the first purpose-built, carrier-neutral Network Access Point and is the only facility of its kind specifically designed to link Latin America with the rest of the world.
Miami has been ranked as one of the top-five best interconnected cities in the world, ahead of San Francisco, Chicago and Washington, D.C. Terremark's NAP of the Americas makes Miami the only city in the U.S. where Optical, Ethernet, MPLS, Voice and Internet traffic is handed off in a single location.
Reason #2. It's all about the cloud.
2. Cloud
Verizon instantly has a viable cloud product available in the US and Europe which is built on Vmware’s Vcloud Express platform which Verizon also uses. Both parties are members of the vCloud initiative and thanks to Vmware’s 5% stake in Terremark they effectively get $70 million dollars worth of Vmware’s money too. Last September VZ put their toe in the water with Terremark and begain white labeling their cloud to circumvent their time to market problems they were experiencing building their own cloud product. In addition, Terremark is huge in the federal sector thanks to their NAP of the Capital Region and has existing federal customers on their cloud (a feat few can claim). Interesting to note that last November Terremark was selected to host the FCC’s cloud initiatives. Is this leverage over the FCC for regulatory negotiations?? hmmm
Reason #3. We want the people and their customers. Note this supports why Verizon will let Terremark exist as a subsidiary and keep the Terremark brand.
3. If you cant’ beat ‘em, buy ‘em
Witness Cyrus One’s acquisition by Cinncinnati Bell and HyperTec’s acquisition by Bell Canada. Carriers have realized that they don’t have the right personnel and intellectual capital to build modern, high density carrier neutral facilities. 15 years after deregulation the LECs and Tier1 operators are still saddled with a dated go-to-market strategy whereby they mistakenly believe selling non-carrier neutral sites will guarantee they control customers and gain all of their associated wallet share of network services. Finally they are conceding to the fact that the 2nd generation of carrier neutral operators are running circles around them in terms of 1) acquiring emerging growth and tech centric customers (content, gaming, financials) and 2) keeping them via sticky products like peering and Ethernet exchange platforms. If you can’t beat em’, BUY ‘em! Adjunct to this point – I would argue that Terremark’s Design and Engineering team is one of the best in the market today. They deploy true Tier III sites vs Equinix and others (tier II).
Reason #4. Security and Federal government market. I was just talking to a friend who works for Department of Homeland Security and he has toured the Terremark Culpepper, VA data center which he says is one of the best secure data centers.
4. Security Expertise
Terremark - Verizon has a huge managed security service provider division thanks to their acquisition of Cybertrust in 2007. Terremark brings two key elements to Verizon’s MSSP practice. 1) Vision / Strategy. Terremark is a leader in this area thanks to their acquisition of Data Return and their industry leading personnel like Christopher Day, Chief Security Architect. 2) Terremark has excellent knowledge and experience around deploying and operating secure systems in a cloud environment. This will prove to be a huge leg up on the competition as folks try to tackle the security problems associated with enterprise cloud.
Another analysis published is here, but they don't go into nearly as much depth as Kevin does and they don't make the point that NAP of America as the #1 asset.
DataCenterKnowledge posts on Verizon plans to keep Terremark as a carrier neutral facility.
Verizon: Terremark Will Remain Carrier-Neutral
January 28th, 2011 : Rich MillerCan a telecom carrier own a carrier-neutral Internet exchange point? Many in the data center industry may be skeptical of the idea. But executives at Verizon insist that its $1.4 billion acquisition of Terremark will not mean any changes for Terremark’s carrier-neutral colocation business.
Peering sites work best in carrier neutral locations.
Terremark an Independent Subsidiary
“We have very specifically set Terremark up as a wholly-owned subsidiary, and Manny and his team will be independent,” said Lowell McAdam, president and chief operating officer of Verizon. “We’re not going to try to cramp their style at all. There will be no moves to take certain customers out of play.”“Our business model is not changing,” said Terremark CEO Manuel Medina. “Our carrier-neutral colocation business will continue as is.”
How will this play? The carrier hotel industry was born out of unhappiness with incumbent telcos and challenges in deploying equipment in central offices. After the Telecom Act of 1996 opened the U.S. phone market to competitive carriers, incumbent phone companies were directed to provide their new rivals with access to central offices to house equipment and make connections.
fyi, a reason I listen to Kevin is his company's business is advising clients on their network strategy.
Next big carrier hotel to be bought is One Wilshire in LA. Major tenants are.
MAJOR TENANTS:
Core Site
Data center and property management company
Musick, Peeler & Garrett LLP
National law firm
Verizon Communications, Inc.
Broadcast and communications provider
Huh, Verizon is a major tenant. Do I hear a bidding war for One Wilshire? Google, Verizon, who else will join in? Whoever can build a worldwide data center solution first has the advantage.
Pike Research has a press release that says the annual Green Data Center market will be $41 billion by 2015. Wow!!! This may be new elevator pitch of my blog, "I blog on a data center market segment that will be $41 billion by 2015."
Green Data Center Market to Reach $41 Billion Annually by 2015
August 5, 2010
The IT industry is responsible for around 2% of the world’s carbon emissions and data centers are the fastest growing part of that footprint. While energy efficiency has not traditionally been a major emphasis for IT organizations, the industry is now highly focused on implementing solutions that will reduce energy expenses and carbon emissions associated with data center operations. According to a new report from Pike Research, the investment in greener data centers will experience rapid growth over the next five years, increasing from $7.5 billion in global revenue to $41.4 billion by 2015, representing 28% of the total data center market.
“Cost of energy has seldom been a concern for IT departments in the past,” says industry analyst Eric Woods, “and there was little incentive to invest in energy efficiency improvements. But as data center energy costs become more visible, the financial benefits of moving to a greener mode of operation are being recognized by CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs.”
Rich Miller at DataCenterKnowledge also reports on this topic.
Report: ‘Green’ Efficiency Market to Hit $41B
August 6th, 2010 : Rich MillerCompanies don’t decide to “go green” with their IT operations because it’s fashionable. For data center operators, energy efficiency is a business imperative. That’s why reducing the energy use and carbon output of these facilities has been a visible priority for the industry for several years. If you’ve attended a data center conference or been pitched by a vendor in the past two years, you’ve repeatedly heard the “green data center” refrain.
Where is the $41 billion going to spent?
Pike Research’s analysis indicates that power and cooling infrastructure solutions will be the largest portion of the green data center market opportunity, representing 46% of revenue over the next five years. Energy efficient IT equipment will be the second largest category with 41% of the market, and monitoring and management will follow with 14% of total revenue.
The green data center market segment is big enough that Pike Research has a report you can buy.
Pike Research’s report, “Green Data Centers”, examines green data center trends, and forecasts the size and growth of the market opportunity by region and technology through 2015. The report analyzes new developments in power and cooling infrastructure, server, storage and network technology, and software management systems that are underpinning green data centers. The study also profiles the strategies of key players in terms of their market approach, technical innovations, and internal efforts to create energy efficient data centers. An Executive Summary of the report is available for free download on the firm’s website.
