In addition to the below, here is a time history of what i have done.

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In 2007 I started blogging on the Green Data Center topic.  During these years, I have met great people who have a passion for greening the data center.  Two guys at the top of the list are Mike Manos and Olivier Sanche.  Both were clients and who have been become great friends.  Unfortunately, Olivier is no longer with us and passed away suddenly at the age of 41.

This blog is where I spend 20% of my time experimenting with ideas, saying what comes to my mind, analyzing why things are going on, and thinking what is going to happen next.  No one pays me to blog.  My blog is my time to practice explaining new concepts.  I am motivated to blog every day (yes, I am a prolific blogger averaging 2 -3 posts a day) which helps me for my other 80% of the time when I work for clients who want to be ahead of the rest in the data center industry.

Being a career tech guy I am used to NDAs, company confidential issues.  So, I use this blog to share public information available, adding my own comments to help interpret events.  My rule for blogging is to only write when I have permission to discuss a topic, there are public disclosures, or are my own original ideas.  Many times I know things, but can’t comment on this blog until public disclosures are made. To help visualize what to write, I think of my friends like Olivier and Mike.  

As Google’s Urs Hoelzle has written, data centers are giant computers, and working in the data center industry, I’ve taken my 26 years of product development experience at HP, Apple, and Microsoft to question what is greener, more sustainable way for data centers to be built and operated.  This path has taken me through data center design, construction, site selection, mechanical equipment, standards and metrics.  Given my background in product development I also integrate the issues with network, HW, OS, management, security, and applications services running in data centers, not just operations, but design impacts on the overall system.

My background

My degree is in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from UC Berkeley.  During college years I was at HP for internships and joined HP after graduation, working in process engineering type of jobs in PC manufacturing, quality/reliability, and distribution logistics.  After 5 years, I joined a smaller company, Apple Computer to redesign their distribution logistics system, and quickly move through a variety of HW and SW product development positions, and became an expert in Asia Font technology.  After 7 years, an even smaller company Microsoft lured me away to work on Windows 3.1 Far East versions, and I stayed there 14 years working mostly on Windows in a variety of roles.  In 2006, after 14 years at Microsoft, I decided to go smaller working for myself and figuring out what I wanted to do next. 

What I do outside this blog

  1. Look for great people to work with.  I have chosen to be a one man company to give me maximum flexbility to try new things.  The moment I add one person, I need to communicate changes which slows me down.
  2. Look for great ideas to play with. Data Centers are complex environments where risk aversion is a standard practice which leaves a lot of opportunities for those who are willing to try things others haven’t.
  3. Translate ideas across silos.  Executives, technical staff, sales/marketing and users think differently.  Information in the data center industry is a huge user interface problem which can’t be solved with dashboards.
  4. I work part time for GigaOm Research as an analyst in areas like Data Centers, Cloud, and Big Data

In addition to the industry people, my inspiration to learn new things is my son who has social skills that will take me a lifetime to be as good as his natural talent.

Enjoy www.greenm3.com as I share what I learn.

-Dave Ohara