SolidNode

Anthony Wanger is the President and Founder of i/o Data Centers. He directs the company’s strategic affairs, handles acquisition activities, and oversees the company’s marketing, HR and legal functions.

The transition from physical, “offline” processes to digital, online processes is referred to as digitization or dematerialization. Processes that are digitized produce less carbon emissions than their analog counterparts. Data centers provide the infrastructure that enables this digitization to occur, serving as the foundation for the energy efficient enterprise.

Over the past 20 years there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of offline processes that have been digitized – everything from software distribution to financial transactions to medical record keeping. The combined effect of all of these digital processes is a macro-scale reduction in the overall use of materials and a more efficient distribution of the materials.

With the advent of the commercial Internet in the 1990s, companies have improved how they interact with their customers, partners and employees. Prior to the World Wide Web and email, businesses and government transacted in mostly inefficient and unconnected ways. For example, in order to pay a bill, a buyer would send a paper-based check by mail, which would be delivered to the recipient by way of a network of carbon-emitting postal vehicles.

Today, bills can be paid online in a matter of minutes. By digitizing this offline process, the need for material (i.e. paper) to be created and transported has been eliminated. This in turn has resulted in a significant reduction in CO2 emissions.

The impact of dematerialization has been quantified by a number of prominent corporations and research institutions including Microsoft, Intel, Lawrence Berkley Labs and Stanford University.

• A recent paper by Dr. Jonathan Koomey, senior researcher for Lawrence Berkley Labs, studied the impact on CO2 emissions resulting from the purchase of music online as compared to the purchase of a compact disc at a music store. Their research shows that the process of purchasing music online can reduce CO2 emissions, on a conservative basis, between 40%-80%.
• A comparative carbon footprint study of Microsoft’s Office 2007 product suite found that the digital delivery of their product to customers reduced carbon emissions by 88%.
• According to NPG Group, Apple leads the U.S. with 25% of all music sold, surpassing both Wal-Mart and Amazon.com. Apple’s iTunes music service has materially changed the way music is purchased and in so doing has eliminated a substantial portion of the carbon footprint related to the offline distribution of music.

iTunes, software distribution, online bill payment and many other digital services are delivered by a complex array of IT systems including servers and telecommunications networks. These servers and networks are located in data centers. Data centers provide the infrastructure (i.e. power, cooling, network access) required by these digital services to function.

Most corporate data centers are built to accommodate the IT needs of a single business unit or department. Large, commercial-grade data centers leverage the economies of scale to reduce energy consumption. Instead of operating ten smaller data centers, an organization could consolidate their IT infrastructure into one or two large data centers and reduce the costs and energy associated with operating separate cooling, UPS, backup power and network access systems.

Modern data centers use the latest technologies and engineering best practices including variable frequency drives, light-emitting diodes (LED) fixtures, thermal energy storage, photovoltaic (PV) solar arrays, ultrasonic humidification and sealed cabinets. Collectively, these systems contribute to a significant reduction in energy consumption – especially during peak load periods.

Conclusion
By combining digitized processes with the economies of scale recognized at large, modern, commercial-grade data centers, today’s enterprise can materially reduce the energy it consumes and greatly improve its efficiency. As consumers, businesses and government look for more efficient ways to communicate and transact, dematerialization and the data center will provide the foundation for a more energy efficient enterprise.

Industry Perspectives is a new content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating in Industry Perspectives.

Original post:
How Digitization Drives Energy Efficiency

Popularity: 13% [?]

With the release of Google Public DNS, it appears that Google is making good on their earlier call to action for making the Web faster. In conjunction with that announcement several months ago, they launched the “Speed” site at Google Code with the headline “Let’s make the Web faster.” After setting up their DNS servers, which replaces the DNS servers from my ISP, I can confirm that my web browsing is indeed much zippier than before. So much so that it’s sort of shocking that ISP’s don’t seem to do much DNS optimization on their own – then again, why would they?

At first, this got me thinking about the self-serving aspects of Google Public DNS, in addition to Google’s other speed initiatives – which include Chrome, Chrome OS, and the announcement of the SPDY protocol. After all, these initiatives are aimed at more than just purely altruistic ends, they’re helping to make the Web a better platform for Google products. I quickly learned that we had already covered that material here on Pingdom’s blog, but the thought kept gnawing at me.

I decided at that point to take things a bit further. Of course Google wants to make the Web faster and more stable, but what will it all mean for the technology giant down the line? And how will their current projects evolve to take advantage of a better performing Web?

Looking ahead five years from now may not allow us to see the full extent of Google’s ambition, so I’ve decided to make a bit of a gamble. Based on the many chess pieces they’ve laid down since the launch of Gmail in 2004, along with a general sense of where today’s technology is headed, let’s jump forward ten years and imagine how things could end up for Google*.

*Assuming that we’re all still around after the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, Skynet remains fiction, and somehow the Large Hadron Collider doesn’t doom us all.

Google’s focus on speed will help bring us to a faster, lag-free Internet sooner

It probably won’t blow any minds to say that the Web will be significantly faster ten years from now. I’m not going to try and argue that Google Public DNS and the SPDY protocol will directly lead to a faster Internet, but Google’s increased focus on speed surely won’t be entirely in vain. Internet access speeds and infrastructure will naturally improve over time, but Google’s DNS service and Chrome browser are also making significantly faster speeds a reality today, and bringing to light the many inefficiencies we currently face on the Internet.

Chrome’s release made browser developers focus more heavily on Javascript performance, and also turned it into a hot topic among power users. Basically, it forced the competition to actually compete, and now improved Javascript performance figures are almost a requirement for developers to tout with every new browser version.

This is a pattern we’ll see repeated several times throughout this piece. It honestly doesn’t matter if Chrome becomes the top browser on the Web, or if its growth remains stagnant. Google made everyone step up their Javascript crunching game – and since that will make their apps faster across all browsers, Google wins no matter what.

Similarly, Google DNS has made more people aware of the issues with DNS resolution when left to ISPs, who haven’t really made DNS optimization a priority. Google DNS makes web browsing faster and safer, the only problem is that the process of changing DNS servers can be a little troublesome for general users (and of course, it introduces some new privacy concerns). The mere existence of Google Public DNS will make people aware of other DNS alternatives, like Open DNS, and ISPs may eventually be able to offer Google’s DNS optimizations on their own servers as an option to customers.

The Internet will be powerful enough to handle today’s offline applications

Many Internet users are already moving away from desktop applications and over to web applications, often without even realizing it. Few webmail users go through the trouble of configuring desktop client access anymore (unless they’re business users that really need Outlook), and I’ve seen many users make far more use of Google Docs than Microsoft Office in the past few years. You can even do some rudimentary audio and video editing using Aviary’s apps.

Ten years from now, we’ll be seeing even more powerful applications residing on the Web, and desktop apps will most likely be relegated to high-end media production and PC gaming. In addition to increased Internet speeds, we can attribute the future rise of better web apps to more robust web standards and plugins.

We’re already taking steps toward that today. Google recently announced that they’ll be moving away from Gears – their technology which allows for offline support, geolocation, and other robust desktop-like features for web applications – and will instead look toward the HTML 5 specification in the future since it supports many similar features.

It should be no surprise that HTML 5 mimics Gears so closely. In 2004, the specification was proposed by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group, and one of the founding members, Ian Hickson, is also a web standards proponent who has been working for Google since 2005. The group also includes individuals from Mozilla and Apple. Before it was called HTML 5, they referred to their specification proposal as “Web Applications 1.0″. With features like built-in media playback, drag and drop support, and offline storage, it’s clear that HTML 5 is still being built with web applications in mind.

Gears was another example of Google pushing the Web in a direction that they wanted. Now, along with Mozilla and Apple, they’ll be helping to shape the very standards the Web is based on with HTML 5.

In ten years, we’ll likely be looking at HTML 6 or 7, and even more powerful plugins from the likes of Adobe and Microsoft. HTML 5 is making strides towards reducing our dependence on third-party plugins, but I don’t think their respective companies will allow Flash or Silverlight to die off too easily.

Internet access will be ubiquitous, free to many, and Google will help make it happen

Now here’s where things become a little more speculative. We’ve already established that a faster and more powerful Web will ultimately be good for Google, and that they’re trying to jump-start innovation when it comes to making that a reality. But what of actual access to the Web? I predict that over the next decade, Google will see a great deal of value in helping to make Internet access more widespread, dirt cheap, and possibly even free. Decently fast web access could very well be ubiquitous in first-world countries.

If a faster and more powerful Web is good for Google, then surely getting more eyes on the Web is in their best interest as well. Broadband adoption will undoubtedly increase on its own over the next decade, but Google could help by figuring out ways to bring Internet access for free to emerging markets like Africa and South America, and low-income users in cities. They could also help to push legislation that would make cheap nationwide broadband a reality in America.

Wave will be an integral part of collaborative communication on the Web

Currently, Google Wave is suffering from confusion and dismissal by many users, which is very similar to what Twitter faced a few years ago (and is still facing today). It’s something that occurs every time a new technology appears and the public doesn’t quite know what to make of it. Sometimes the technology just disappears into oblivion, but once in a while it ends up changing the way we live.

Having used Google Wave in several capacities, from planning podcast episodes, to brain storming this very article, I can understand the confusion. On the face of it, the service is just a glorified chat client with an email interface. Dig a little deeper though, and the true face of Wave quickly makes itself clear.

Real-time updating, threaded conversations, and the ability to play back updates all end up making Google Wave the best collaborative resource on the Web. It’s better than Google Docs for simultaneous collaboration because of the real-time updates (instead of the “whenever it feels like it” updating of Docs), and the threaded conversation allow for some order amidst the collaborative chaos. And to make even further sense of how the conversation evolved, the ability to play back edits is immensely useful.

Many have seemed to forget this, but when it was first announced, Google intended for anyone to be able to deploy their own Wave server. It’s a protocol, like any other, and individually deployed Wave servers will be able to interact with the greater community.

What does this mean in ten years? For one, we’ll quickly see Wave implemented across the board on Google’s services. Businesses and other organizations will adopt it for in-group collaboration. I’d even wager as far to say that anyone who has an email account will have access to Wave. Wave’s real-time updating features will also see widespread use among mobile devices.

Android will have won the mobile platform wars

Yeah, I said it. Apple’s current lead in the smartphone space won’t last for long once Android finally gathers some steam. Android’s victory will be in sheer number of devices, as well as the ability to hit price points that Apple would never dare. Top-end Android phones will continue to compete with Apple’s iPhone successors, but Android will take Nokia’s place in ruling the dirt-cheap and free phone segment.

Not everyone needs a fancy smartphone with a huge screen and a fast processor, and the low-end Android phones will cater to that market. Of course, in a decade even the low-end phones will probably blow us away, but I think we’ll begin seeing cheap Android phones within the next few years. Then there’s also the speculation about the data-only VOIP Google phone, which could radically change the landscape for phone service.

In the end, having the fastest hardware, and the most apps in their online store (although that won’t last for long either), won’t be enough to keep Apple on top. That is, unless they come up with a radically cheap phone of their own. The fact that Android is free, customizable for handset makers, and deployable on a wide variety of mobile hardware, makes its mobile takeover more than just speculation. It’s inevitable.

Google Search will be able to find anything instantly – a harbinger of the Technological Singularity?

Short of reading minds, there will be nothing that touches the Web left that Google’s search engine can’t tackle. Just today they announced how they’re integrating real-time search results, using their secret sauce relevancy engine. Google Fellow Amit Singhal’s also mentioned the following, which seems especially prescient for this article, “Light can travel around the world in 1/10th of a second, and we won’t rest until the speed of light is the only barrier to getting good search results to you.”

While I’m not sure the laws of physics will ever allow that to be possible (unless everything between you and Google was pure fiber optic cabling), it’s nice to see that they’re always looking for that next milestone.

Relevancy will become increasingly important to Google as they have more and more information to deal with. Their problem won’t be gathering all the data, it’ll be making sense of it. It looks like they’ve already gotten a handle on how to implement Twitter, Facebook, and the like – it’ll be interesting to see how they tackle the rest of the upcoming deluge.

The increasing powers of Google Search will also be of great interest to Sci-Fi fans like myself a decade from now. Futurist types like Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil have long predicted a point where artificial intelligence becomes self-improving, at which point they will quickly surpass human intelligence. Who knows what sort of tricks Google will employ down the line to stay ahead in the search engine game, but be wary if your search queries ever start seeming too smart.

But of course, the moment you realize that Google Search has become sentient, it’s already too late.

Wrapping up

While the past decade has in many ways been ruled by Apple and their many instances of redefining the technological landscape, I predict that the next ten years will be Google’s reign. They’re now more than a young search engine startup. Google is a technological powerhouse that’s reshaping the Internet, the way we use it, and our overall relationship with technology.

Special thanks to my friends Carl Angiolillo and Dwayne De Freitas for their help with brainstorming this article.

Photo credit: Cheetah by Jason Bechtel.

About the author:
Devindra Hardawar is a tech/film blogger and podcast host. You can find him writing at the Far Side of Tech and Slashfilm.

Original post:
What the Google Web will look like in 10 years

Popularity: 6% [?]

This is the one time during the year that online retailers need to ensure preparedness for the onslaught of holiday shoppers and it seems as though many businesses may have dropped the ball.  “Black Friday”, one of the busiest shopping days of the season, and the thirty days leading up to this day were heavy monitored by Uptrends, a remote-intelligence performance monitoring service.  The results put out by this web site monitoring company showed that many retail companies with sites online were less than prepared overall.

Companies monitored

Uptrends monitored one hundred of the more popular e-retailers throughout the month of November, up to and including “Black Friday.”  Of those companies monitored, a few came out on top with numerous page errors and long periods of down-time.

The biggest loser out of those monitored was Crutchfield Corporation, an electronics specialty retailer, with a total of sixty-one page errors and over five hours of web site down-time.  Following not too far behind was home electronics biggie, Fry’s.  This store managed to build up a total of forty-three page errors and over three and half hours of totaled down-time.

Out of all one hundred of the monitored web sites, nearly half experienced some amount of down-time.  Fifty-five were able to maintain a 100% up-time, twenty-four came in at 99.9% and twenty-one sported a 99.6% up-time.  Anything lower than 99.6% results in over three and a half hours of down-time in a thirty day period.

Of growing concern is that many of the companies monitored are considered to be household names.  The online public demographic is the same as the general public when it comes to shopping both online and off.  These shoppers expect a certain level of reliability of those in the retail business who have been around for quite some time.

Other affected web sites

It seems as though those companies monitored by Uptrend weren’t the only ones affected by the “Black Friday” holiday shopping rush.  Department store Sears’ online web site experienced multiple and total site crashes throughout the day.  Walmart, Kmart, Amazon, Target and Costco all experience significant web site slowdowns or other internet issues.

According to StorefrontBacktalk, numerous large and well-known retailers were affected in one way or another with the influx of shoppers on “Black Friday”.  Even non-retail product providers were showing as having issues.  Hallmark.com, while stating its web site issues were attributed to improvements, greeted customers with an unavailable message on this day.

Growing market

With more and more retailers joining the online retail crowd, it seems to be a growing concern over whether or not companies are putting in the time and research to improve upon overall reliability.  Day to day operations of an online retail store is not the proper litmus test for reliability.  It is days like “Black Friday” that should be the standard setters.  Perhaps the issues that cropped up on this traditional holiday shopping day should be assessed and scrutinized to better prepare e-retailers for next year’s holiday shopping menagerie.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Here’s a roundup of news announcements from the data center and hosting industry:

• Cisco’s Space Router: A “space-tolerant” router designed by Cisco flew into orbit this week aboard an Intelsat, Ltd. satellite. The Intelsat 14 satellite is a demonstration of Internet Routing in Space (IRIS) for the U.S. military. “We expect IRIS to connect the Internet with satellites in space for the warfighters who need seamless communication between ground-based networks and satellites used for communications,” said Kay Sears, president of Intelsat General. “Once the capabilities of IRIS are demonstrated, there could be a great deal of interest in this technology from a wide range of end users, both inside and outside of government.”
• Fujitsu opens annex of Tokyo data center. Fujitsu announced Monday the opening of the new annex of the Tatebayashi System Center in Gunma Prefecture outside Tokyo. The data center will power outsourcing services and next-generation cloud services business in Japan. The new annex also showcases the latest eco-friendly technologies as a part of “Fujitsu’s Green Policy Innovation” green IT project. The 247,000 square foot data center can accomodate 20 kVA per rack and employs solar power generation. The facility will initially contain a server farm configured with 1,000 servers and Fujitsu is looking to implement virtualization, autonomy, scalability, and usability, further advancing its Trusted-Service Platform for cloud services in Japan.

• Juniper products awarded MEF certification.  Juniper Networks announced Monday that its M series multiservice edge routers, T series core routers and MX series 3D universal edge routers have been awarded to Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF) 21 standards by Iometrix.  Juniper vice president of Operations Gert Jan Shenk said “MEF certification demonstrates that the Juniper routing portfolio enhances the operator experience and economics of networking for the service provider.”  Juniper unveiled its vision for a “new network” in October with new software, hardware and partnerships.
• Core NAP completes Type II SAS 70 audit. Austin Texas based Core NAP announced it has completed a Type II SAS 70 audit of its general controls supporting data center operations.  The report addresses the control environment, risk assessment activities, control activities, information and communication systems and monitoring activities.  “Core NAP’s management understands the ever-increasing importance of corporate governance, as well as the impact of the organization’s services on our clients’ internal controls,” said Kenneth Smith, president and CEO of Core NAP.

Original post:
Roundup: Cisco Space Router, Fujitsu, Juniper

Popularity: 12% [?]

Here’s a roundup of news announcements from the data center and hosting industry:

• Internap Enhances CDN for High Quality Video. On Tuesday Internap Network Services announced enhancements to its content delivery network (CDN) offering, including new ease-of-use functions and automation of key CDN capabilities.  A comScore Video Metrix service poll showed that in September 2009 more than 84.8% of the total U.S. Internet audience watched online video. Version 5.0 of Internap’s CDN MediaConsole includes an integrated rule-based transcoding that automatically converts video into the ideal formats for a broad range of devices.  It also performs a continuous bitrate adjustment that dynamically adapts video streams based on the capabilities and bandwidth of the network.  Internap is showcasing its CDN offering at the Streaming Media West conference November 17-19.
• Rackspace Launches Cloud Drive. Rackspace (RAX) announced a set of new product offerings that help businesses move their IT applications into the cloud.  New products include Cloud Drive, Server Backup, and an upcoming release of Hosted Microsoft SharePoint.  The new cloud products mark an aggressive move by Rackspace to expand into collaboration and backup applications and compete in the software-as-a-service market.  Rackspace Cloud Drive is a cloud-based, online file storage application that allows individuals and teams to store, share and backup files. Rackspace Server Backup is a cloud-based, online server backup application designed to protect file server data.  Both Server Backup and Cloud Drive are powered by technology from Jungle Disk, a Rackspace subsidiary acquired in 2008.

• Joyent Secures $8.5 million from Intel Capital. Cloud provider Joyent announced Tuesday that it received an infusion of funding from Intel’s global investment organization, Intel Capital.  The funds will be used to accelerate its product development, sales and marketing and an increased global expansion. “Joyent has developed its own data center virtualization technology that creates a flexible multi-tenant cloud,” said Joyent CEO David Young. ”As a result, Joyent’s technology delivers more than 70 percent utilization, which is eight times more than industry averages.”
• Isilon announces new scale-out NAS products. Isilon Systems announced the release of the Isilon IQ 72000X and 72NL scale-out NAS products, bringing to market a 10 Petabyte single file system and single volume for nearline archive and disk-to-disk backup environments.  The new products leverage Hitachi 2TB drives to double system capacity while reducing power, cooling and data center footprint by 50 percent.  The IQ 72NL combines 72 Terabytes of storage in a 4U chassis and will scale to more than 10 Petabytes in a single file system.  Both products are available currently in limited quantities, and will be generally available in January 2010.

Original post:
Roundup: Internap, Rackspace, Joyent, Isilon

Popularity: unranked [?]

A clever choice of the right architecture on right infrastructure has helped the SaaS vendors better manage their operational infrastructure cost but the SaaS vendors are still struggling to curtail the cost of sales. As majority of the SaaS vendors achieve feature and infrastructure cost parity, reducing the cost of sales is going to be the next biggest differentiation for the SaaS vendors to stay competitive in the marketplace.

Direct sales model is highly ineffective and cost-prohibitive for the SaaS vendors as it does not scale with the volume business model that has relatively smaller average deal size. The role of the direct sales organization will essentially get redefined to focus on the relationship with the customers to ensure service excellence and high contract renewal rates in addition to working on long sales cycles for large accounts.

How can a SaaS vendor reduce the overall cost of sales to maintain healthy margins and growth?

This is a difficult nut to crack. There are no quick fixes. There is no easy way to optimize the tale end of the process without holistically redesigning the entire SaaS life cycle.

Self-service demos to “self-selling” trials:

Fundamentally the direct sales model for an on-premise software sales has been all about initial investment into the right demos to model customer scenarios and align the sales pitch to match the solution needs. The SaaS vendors moved away from this model as much as they could and replaced it with the self-service demos or trials. However these demos are not “self-selling” and still requires intervention from the direct sales people at various levels.

The SaaS vendors need to move from self-service demos to the self-selling ones that are not only fully functional out-of-the-box but also articulate the solution capabilities implicitly or explicitly. The demo is not just about showing what problems you are solving but it is also about how well it maps to the customers’ pain points. It is like buying a hole and not a drill. The demo and the product should scream out loud the value proposition without making customers go through a webinar or a series of PowerPoint slides.

Customer acquisition to customer retention:

SaaS companies have traditionally focused their sales and marketing budget on customer acquisition against retention. While customer acquisition is a necessity the increasing SaaS competition could result into the current customers ditching the vendors. Customer support is the new sales model. Design your customer support organization and operations to retain customers. Don’t let the contract renewals slip through the cracks.

Your customers are the biggest asset that you have. Market new solutions to them as an up-sell. One of the powerful features of a SaaS platform is to be able to integrate and push the new products effortlessly to the existing customers and have them try it out before they start paying you. Modernize your internal tools to track the usage analytics to better understand your customers, sales activities and effectiveness of the marketing campaigns. You have a problem if you cannot tell which customer is using what, who are the right partners, who needs training and support etc. If you haven’t lately looked at the tools that your sales people use this is the right time. I would not expect a SaaS vendor to reduce the cost of sales without empowering the sales force with the true customer, competitior, and partner intelligence.

Low-touch persuasions to hi-touch interactions:

Low-touch one-to-one selling does not scale. Replicate the Avon model. Design a great ecosystem of your channel partners to whom you can pass on the cost of sales. Align the incentives and encourage the partners to sell but ensure the customer support and overall brand integrity. This strategy would require an extensive partner program with sizable investment in training and tracking what and how the partners are selling but this investment will go long way.

Reserve the direct sales force engagement for large hi-touch CIO type deals where you are required to go whole nine yards before you get a contract. The key is to have a highly variable sales force and extremely efficient compensation model to deal with a variety of prospects and customers. One size does not fit all.

Low-barrier adoption to zero-barrier productivity:

The SaaS model pioneered the low-barrier adoption empowering the LOB to sign up and start using the software without an approval or help from the IT. Eliminate any and all barriers to further penetrate the adoption. Do not enforce upfront credit-card requirements and even skip the registration if you can. Let the customers use the software with the minimum or no information up front. Demonstrate value when asking for more information e.g. Picnik lets you manipulate image in any way you want but would ask you to register if you want to save images. There should be no paper work whatsoever, not even a physical contract. Allow customers to bring in the content from other sources such as Flickr, Facebook etc. Allow the customers to have access to a live sandbox as a step before the dedicated trial. Starting from a blank canvas could be a hindrance to evaluate a product.

Original Post:
SaaS 2.0 Will Be All About Reducing The Cost Of Sales

Popularity: unranked [?]