Monday, March 10th, 2014

Time	Event
12:30p	IBM Watson Supercomputer Powers Food Truck at SXSW At the SXSW festival in Austin, diners line up to taste dishes developed by IBM’s Watson supercomputer. (Photo: IBM Research via Flickr) At this year’s SXSW festival in Austin, IBM and the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE) have teamed up on a food truck, with IBM’s Watson supercomputer acting as a cloud based cognitive cooking system to help chefs come up with creative menus. For example, today’s dish is Vietnamese Apple Kebab, which sounds both amazing and like something you’d never dream of coming up with. Based on tweets for suggested potential dishes for the food truck’s menu each day, the ICE chefs and IBM researchers are tapping into this system to take the top trending ideas and turn them into dishes. There is a huge catalog of possible food combinations, and Watson analyses this big data stored in an IBM cloud. This goes beyond searching a list of recipes, and looking deeper into how food ingredients potentially play with one another, possibly leading to some very creative dishes. After Watson does a little creative work, the chefs get to cooking. Dystopian futures of machines driving the creativity and humans doing the menial tasks are just around the corner. In all seriousness, Watson is acting as the perfect cooking tool, helping the chefs gain data-driven insight into ingredient pairings. It’s on a level that basic experience can only begin to touch upon.  As the IBM website proclaims, computing has always made us more efficient, now it’s making us more creative. The idea is a fun one, displaying one potential creative use for the power under Watson’s hood. It’s also a great PR move on the part of IBM, demonstrating the creative side of what most people know as the machine that beat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy. It introduces cognitive computing to a wider, savvy audience. There are numerous applications in retail, healthcare and beyond, where thinking computers are partnering with people. (Comment on this)
1:11p	Fewer Silos For The Files: Managing Cloud Data Jeetu Patel is general manager of EMC Syncplicity. JEETU PATEL EMC Syncplicity The demand for ubiquitous access to any file, any place on any device has resulted in a wide range of new cloud services over the last five years. While many of these services do deliver to some extent on this promise, they also end up creating entirely new silos of information. Now, when you want to access an important piece of information, you have to remember whether it is on your local hard drive, your shared file system, the document management application or the consumer file sync and share. Or all of the above? These silos exist because there is not just one that satisfies everything you are trying to accomplish. Vendors don’t necessarily intend to create information silos, but their limited architecture and short-sighted approach forces users to drag and store all content in their system to make it work. This creates significant barriers for users who want to access their files. Where did they save it, is it the most current version and can they even access it from the road? But wait. What if there was a better way – a method that started to break down all of these silos rather than creating a new one. How would that be? First and foremost, it makes much more sense to open up existing silos than to create new ones that circumvent the infrastructure you’ve already built – and we can now do this. Bringing Your Data to the Cloud An ideal enterprise solution would not copy all the files from the local server and place them in a separate information repository in the cloud as many consumer-centric file sync and share solutions do. Instead, it would simply open up the company’s existing file storage systems, making files and home directories available in the cloud just as they are on the local server. For example, as a tool specifically designed for the enterprise, EMC Syncplicity will be making information from Isilon and many other storage systems accessible automatically via the cloud. This approach solves a common problem: with so many apps for file sharing, collaboration and productivity, users must often switch between different user interfaces and try to remember where exactly a file is located. This can be a problem if you are just using one file system, and it increases by an order of magnitude with each additional system you use. As a comparison, think about how much easier your web experience is now that you can log in to consumer apps and sites using Facebook, giving you access to all your Facebook friends and the option to seamlessly share updates from those apps on Facebook. This eliminates steps, saves users time and creates a great user experience. Unlocking Existing Silos Furthermore, as the device ecosystem continues to expand and the BYOD trend continues to proliferate, having access to files on every device at all times is becoming less of a perk and more or an expectation. File sharing tools, especially for the enterprise, should unlock existing information silos so they are accessible on all the devices their employees may be using. Documents and files are useless unless they are accessible when, where and how users need them. Many content management platforms, like Microsoft SharePoint, have thus far only been accessible via PCs connected to an organization’s server due to the lack of a secure, streamlined and cost-effective approach to delivering mobile access. Opening existing document management and file storage infrastructure to mobile, and eventually all connected devices, without requiring a full-scale migration of data is a challenge cloud file sharing services must tackle to truly turn on an increasingly mobile and connected workforce. Just as files are useless if users can’t access them, a file sync and share solution fails to deliver on its promise when it only mimics the existing experience of yesterday’s technology. Mobile devices have penetrated almost every aspect of consumers’ lives and apps like FlipBoard have redefined how we interact with content, yet most file sharing solutions, like Box and Dropbox, are still simply recreating 20-year-old file trees on a small screen and calling it a mobile app. The companies that are helping move the enterprise into the future, the ones that will ultimately come out on top, are developing truly innovative mobile apps that allow these devices to function as full work platforms that take advantage of contextual elements like location, proximity and social feeds. Features like in-app document editing, simplified folder navigation optimized for the touch interface, and use of mobile-only contextual data such as location and proximity make for a dynamic and powerful user experience on mobile devices. Breaking down information silos to create a streamlined way for users to interact with their files and get their work done when and where they want is the only way to allow productivity for the evolving workforce. And in the end, it all comes down to how we can be most productive in our work, in the office and everywhere else. Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library. (Comment on this)
1:30p	CommScope Offers Data Center Modules With Integrated DCIM One example of Commscope’s data center on demand. (Image: CommScope) CommScope is now offering Data Center on Demand, a modular solution with built in DCIM capabilities via iTRACS, which it acquired in March 2013. The modular offering provides a flexible, efficient, purpose-built alternative to traditional brick and mortar data centers ,whether as an initial data center or an expansion of an existing facility. “This is more than just a traditional modular data center offering,” said Kevin St Cyr, senior vice president, Enterprise Solutions, CommScope.  “It is not just a shipping container with servers. It is designed specifically with the same usability and ease of access to IT equipment as a traditional data center, but with lower up front and operating costs.” Many organizations are looking to reduce their total cost of ownership and simplify operational management by deploying a pay-as-you-grow data center solution. Data Center On Demand Features: Technology based on systems operating in extreme climates for more than six years Scalable solutions from one to thousands of racks Annual average data center power usage effectiveness (PUE) as low as 1.03 to 1.06 (industry PUEs typically range from 1.8 to 2.0) Standardized repeatable designs that reduce complexity and shorten planning and deployment time Customizable configuration, with off-the-shelf components supporting multiple Tier levels, security, fire and core infrastructure “Enterprises are dealing with a continual data deluge and have to find ways to expand their capacity quickly and efficiently,” said St Cyr. “Some are up against the wall when it comes to physical space or available power and Data Center on Demand gives them a viable solution to expand quickly and easily with industry proven technology.” (Comment on this)
8:00p	Yahoo to Sublease 24 Megawatts of Virginia Space Yahoo is seeking to sublease the entire 10 megawatts of data center space at ACC2, a DuPont Fabros facility in Ashburn, Virginia. (Photo: DuPont Fabros) Some of the world’s largest technology companies are consolidating their Internet infrastructure in company-built data centers, and moving out of leased data center space. Will this shift disrupt the market for “wholesale” third-party data center space? This important question is being tested in the nation’s two largest data center markets. Yahoo has recently decided to sublease a whopping 24 megawatts of space in northern Virginia, while Facebook has been marketing its leased space in Silicon Valley. The subleasing could shift the balance between the supply and demand of data center space, which can influence the pricing on leasing deals. Yahoo Gives Notice to DFT Last week Yahoo notified its landlord in Ashburn, DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT), that it planned to sublease 24 megawatts of data center, including the entire 10.4 megawatts of space in the ACC2 building and 13.65 megawatts of space in DFT’s ACC4 data center. The ACC2 lease expires in Sept. 2015, while the space in ACC4 expires in three equal chunks of 4.55 MW in June 2017, March 2018 and March 2019. The leases represent 11 percent of DuPont Fabros’ portfolio. Yahoo is required to continue making lease payments, but has the right to sublease its unused space. DFT says it sought to rework the lease at ACC2 to avoid a subleasing scenario. “We asked for it back early, because we did have a customer for it,” said Hossein Fateh, President and CEO of DuPont Fabros, in last month’s earnings call. “They refused to give us the space back.” In the wholesale data center model, a tenant leases fully-built “plug-n-play” data center space. They pay a significant premium over typical leases for office space, but are spared the need to invest large amounts of capital in data center construction. Shift in Yahoo’s Model Yahoo leased the Ashburn wholesale space from DuPont Fabros between 2000 and 2005. In 2009, Yahoo built a data center campus in Lockport, New York using an innovative “computing coop” design. Last year the company announced a $170 million expansion in Lockport. The Lockport data center is one of the most energy efficient facilities in the world, operating at a Power Usage Efficiency of 1.08, and is powered entirely by hydro-electricity. While Yahoo hasn’t been very talkative about its data center strategy in recent years, it presumably has shifted workloads from Virginia to Lockport, leaving megawatts of empty space in Ashburn. “In my opinion, subleasing data center space is extremely difficult, especially if it’s a shorter term lease,” said Fateh. “You almost always need a tri-party agreement between landlord, old tenants and new tenants. This is mission-critical space. So I’m not sure how you would do it without a tri-party agreement or without the landlord’s complete buy-in. Almost always, the new tenant needs something from the landlord. ” It may be difficult, but it can be done. In Santa Clara, Facebook recently subleased three megawatts of space to Internap Network Services (INAP), which is using the space to expand its data center footprint in Silicon Valley. Issues With Subleasing When a large tenant subleases space, it provides additional options for companies shopping for data center capacity, allowing them to sublease from the tenant rather than leasing directly from a facility owner like DFT. It also has implications for pricing, as companies like Yahoo and Facebook may be willing to offer discounts to attract a sublessor who can help them reduce their data center bills. Facebook has been marketing its surplus space in Santa Clara for nearly a year, but major wholesale providers say this hasn’t disrupted their business. “In California, it’s well-publicized that Facebook has a significant amount of market space on the sublease market in Northern California,” said Fateh. “We have leased approximately 15 megawatts of space since that time to other tenants.” Digital Realty Trust, which along with DuPont Fabros is one of the largest wholesale players in the northern Virginia market, says it doesn’t believe the Yahoo subleasing effort will impact its business in Ashburn. “As to Yahoo, that product in our competitor is very different from our POD 3.0 architecture,” Digital Realty CEO Mike Foust said on the company’s recent earnings call. “It’s a shared backplane for the power train or UPS and electrical switchgear, and the HVAC is also not as modular as with our POD 3.0. Our customers really strongly desire the fully dedicated, UPS dedicated power and cooling. So that’s a huge product differentiator for us. We don’t believe that this sublease face will have much of an impact at all on our customers.” One of the challenges for Yahoo will be finding a company willing to sublease its space for a short period of time. Yahoo’s lease at ACC2 has just 18 months remaining, while the leases at ACC4 are three to five years. (Comment on this)

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