Thursday, May 11th, 2017

Time	Event
12:00p	Akamai Buys Wind Power for Its Texas Data Centers One year ago, Akamai Technology pledged its commitment to source renewable energy for 50 percent of its global operations by 2020. The company just took a big step toward meeting that goal, announcing a 20-year investment in a wind farm. Akamai said it should get enough energy from the 80-megawatt Seymour Hills Wind Farm to offset its aggregate Texas data center operations, representing approximately seven percent of its global power load. Based outside of Dallas and developed by Infinity Renewables, the project is slated to go online in 2018. Plans for the development call for construction of 38 wind turbines across approximately 8,000 acres. Akamai is using a method called Contract for Differences to achieve the clean-energy goal for its more than 200,000 servers running in data centers spread across 126 countries—one of the world’s largest content delivery networks. The way it works is Akamai agrees to act as an “off-taker” for an X amount of energy from a renewable generation developer—in this case, Infinity Renewables—over a long term at a fixed energy price. The developer sells the energy on the wholesale market, and the difference between the actual sale price and the fixed price Akamai has agreed to goes to Akamai as either credit or debit. Akamai will continue to buy electricity from its utility provider but gets to keep and retire renewable energy credits it receives through its contract with the developer. See also: How Renewable Energy is Changing the Data Center Market Wind and solar power costs have dropped enough that they’re competitive with electricity generated from fossil fuel sources, with the added benefit that renewable power producers can offer customers long-term price stability. Tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have led the way because their electricity use has grown as they open data centers worldwide to provide cloud computing services. But smaller companies are starting to make similar investments. See also: Equinix to Press On With Clean Energy Goals After Trump’s Executive Order Digital Realty: Trump’s Climate Order Won’t Change Firm’s Clean Energy Goals “Corporate buyers have become a very important market for the growth of utility-scale renewable energy deployment, having overtaken electric utilities in gigawatts purchased in 2015,” said Matt Langley, VP of finance and origination at Infinity Renewables, in a prepared statement. “We predict that minor energy off-takers, like Akamai, represent the next big wave of corporate buyers, and we are eager to partner with them.” Akamai received a “B” grade in a recent Greenpeace report evaluating IT companies’ efforts to adopt and promote renewable energy. The company got high marks for transparency, commitment to renewable energy, energy efficiency, and advocacy, but got a lower grade for renewable energy procurement. (Comment on this)
3:00p	Zero One: 11 Highest Paying Tech Jobs in US for 2017 Brought to you by MSPmentor Glassdoor, a job hunting and salary comparison website, reported the highest paying jobs in the United States for this year. Eleven of the top 25 jobs were in tech, although the top five were mostly in healthcare and medicine. For the complete list, check out SFgate. Meanwhile, Linkedin came out with similar job data on highest paying jobs in tech, reported by CIO.com. See also: How to Get a Data Center Job at Facebook How to Get a Data Center Job at Google Below is a ranked list of only tech jobs in the Glassdoor report, their median base salary and number of job openings. Linkedin data on salaries in engineering are also included. 11. Systems Architect  Median Base Salary: $97,873 Number of Job Openings: 1,167 10. UX Manager  Median Base Salary: $98,353 Number of Job Openings: 263 9. IT Program Manager  Median Base Salary: $98,883 Number of Job Openings: 250 8. Data Architect  Median Base Salary: $102,091 Number of Job Openings: 1,438 7. Solutions Architect  Median Base Salary: $102,678 Number of Job Openings: 4,174 6. Software Architect  Median Base Salary: $104,754 Number of Job Openings: 1,147 5. IT Architect  Median Base Salary: $105,303 Number of Job Openings: 250 4. Software Engineering Manager  Median Base Salary: $109,350 Number of Job Openings: 1,011 LinkedIn: Senior Director of Engineering: $250,000 Vice President of Engineering: $225,000 Senior Engineering Manager: $202,000 Director of Engineering: $199,000 3. R&D Manager  Median Base Salary: $111,905 Number of Job Openings: 185 2. Applications Development Manager  Median Base Salary: $112,045 Number of Job Openings: 516 1. Enterprise Architect  Median Base Salary: $112,560 Number of Job Openings: 1,320 For more on tech jobs, check out 2017 Salary Guide: 16 Hottest Digital Transformation Skills based on a Robert Half Technology report. Based in Silicon Valley, Tom Kaneshige writes the Zero One blog covering digital transformation, AI, marketing tech and the Internet of Things for line-of-business executives. He is eager to hear how the search for digital transformation skills is impacting your business. You can reach him at tom.kaneshige@penton.com. This article originally appeared on MSPmentor. (Comment on this)
3:30p	DocuSign Taps Microsoft Azure for Canadian Cloud Brought to You by Talkin’ Cloud Electronic signature technology provider DocuSign announced on Wednesday at the Microsoft Build 2017 conference in Seattle that it has selected Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud vendor to help it scale and extend its reach to Canada. The announcement comes as it has launched its Invest for Canada initiative that focuses on serving the needs of the Canadian public and private sectors, the company said. Laws in Canada dictate the personally-identifiable information used in digital transactions is kept in Canada during transmission and at rest, DocuSign said. Last week, DocuSign said that it has grown its user base 135 percent year-over-year, and has more than 300,000 customers and more than 200 million users. The company ended its lengthy search for a new CEO in June when it appointed Dan Springer to fill the spot. See also: Microsoft Unveils New Cloud Services for AI and Industrial Sensors “We’re in the business of bringing people to agreement digitally, then helping them honor and deliver on those agreements,” Dan Springer, CEO of DocuSign said in a statement. “To do that in as many countries as possible for as many users as possible, we need the agility to ramp up our cloud services quickly and efficiently to meet varying demands. We already have a strong carrier-grade private cloud infrastructure in place in many markets. But in choosing Microsoft Azure we have access to a highly secure, global cloud that offers data redundancy in multiple in-country locations for business continuity – something that’s an absolute prerequisite for us given we operate a high-availability business.” DocuSign said that the Azure partnership will give it data centers across two locations (Toronto and Quebec City) in Canada, ensuring that the personally-identifiable information (PII) stays in the country. The services in Canada will come online later this year, according to the company. The company also hinted at the possibility that the partnership with Microsoft would extend to help it meet the needs of customers around the world. “We have a deep partnership with DocuSign, and appreciate the company’s collaboration in helping to develop, test and deploy a Managed Instance option within the Azure SQL Database service,” Scott Guthrie, EVP of the cloud and enterprise group at Microsoft said in a statement. “The advanced features and the scaling requirements of the DocuSign platform help to bolster Azure’s enterprise-proven scale, availability, security and performance even further for our mutual customers.” This article originally appeared on Talkin’ Cloud. (Comment on this)
4:00p	Moving to Enterprise-Grade Cloud: Closing the IT Skills Gap Ariel Maislos is CEO of Stratoscale. The in-house expertise needed to manage a hybrid cloud that includes the use of AWS services can be quite considerable. The list includes: Integrated networking, connecting on-premises and cloud resources through a common network to facilitate the creation of a single enterprise environment Identity access and management, providing a single identity and access strategy that often goes hand-in-hand with integrating networks. Deployment and management. The most robust form of hybrid architecture involves integrating application deployment and management across on-premises and cloud environments. Data mobility through AWS storage gateway, RDS, S3 and AWS snowball. Therefore, before beginning a transition, it is important to identify and understand your organization’s skills gap. This requires comparing your current system to the system you will migrate to, identifying areas where there is a skills shortage. This requires bringing all of the business unit leaders in the organization to the table to consider the impacts the transition will have. Key personnel leaders here include the data center manager, IT operations manager, network managers, database admin leads, manager software development and the HR manager. Step 1: Strategize Preparation begins with asking the right people the right questions. Ask questions like where does the team stand in terms of cloud technologies? Do they have skills similar to those the cloud requires? If there is a skills gap, how big is it, and do we need to hire? Are there tools to bridge the skills gap? How excited is the team about the new platform? What is the cost impact? These are some of the questions that you need to ask to your in-house team. An optimal research process should give concrete answers to help create your strategy. Step 2: Defining Skill Sets Before approaching HR with any requests for new IT hires, you’ll need to spend some time outlining the skills necessary for the redefined and new job roles. Below is one example of a new role that might be required in your organization’s move to cloud. Cloud Architect: The Cloud Architect must possess a strong understanding of how to design and build cloud environments to meet both performance and cost requirements. These people will already have data center management and architecting experience. Key responsibilities: Developing product expertise in a short time frame Architecting new solutions or adapting existing ones to optimally run in a cloud-based environment Owning the execution and implementation of cloud migration strategies (this will include deployment/provisioning using DevOps tools, data migration, testing, cutover/failover of systems, configuration of monitoring and other production management systems) Overseeing technical quality for the output of small teams of software engineers (requirements reviews, architectural) Required Skills and Experience: 10-12 years of IT experience, minimum 3-5 years in cloud solutions & services Expertise in Amazon Web Services / Microsoft Azure Experience with Docker and Aurora Expertise in DevOps tools like Ansible, Puppet, or Chef Deep knowledge of network stack and filesystems Solid experience with the networking, performance, security, and operational aspects of the AWS environment Proficient in modern architecture stacks, SOA, relational DBs, stateless API, etc. Excellent understanding of current enterprise software technologies and development practices/tools, including virtual environments, source control, remote development, issue tracking, build and test automation, and networking management Other positions that may need to be filled when your enterprise moves to the cloud area an AWS migrations DevOps engineer, an AWS DevOps engineer, a cloud automation Engineer, a cloud security engineer and a cloud test automation engineer. Step 3: Engage with HR Based on strategy meetings and newly defined IT roles, you should be ready to create and deliver job descriptions to your human resources department. This should entail an in-person discussion with the head HR professional. Why? In many organizations, the human resources staff is not knowledgeable enough about tech matters to adequately recruit without input from IT. An in-person meeting and open dialogue gives the HR professional the opportunity to ask questions about certain job requirements. This is time well-spent. Based on the current demand, HR managers may have to first look in-house to fill new roles. In the course of your discussions, you and HR may find that in some cases a current employee may already have the skill set to fulfill a new role. Together with the HR professional you may determine that it makes the most sense to hire from within, at which point you can prepare a training plan for collaborative growth. HR plays an important role in resolving the IT skill set gaps and report on the different options, so you can assemble a competent team. Conclusion Filling the skills gap will take time. Adequately transitioning and training current employees who are able to use cloud tools and technologies will certainly save time and money, enabling a quicker adoption. If that is not an option, you should hire new employees based on strategic planning and collaboration with HR, which will show the move to cloud was both carefully considered and executed. Opinions expressed in the article above do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Data Center Knowledge and Penton. 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)
5:54p	Highest-Paid Women in America Reap Rewards of Technology Boom (Bloomberg) — Ginni Rometty, Meg Whitman and Safra Catz have been trailblazers in the technology industry, and now they’re America’s highest-paid female executives. Rometty, 59, the chief executive officer of International Business Machines Corp., was awarded a $96.8 million package for last year, making her the top-ranked woman on the Bloomberg Pay Index, a ranking of the 200 best-compensated executives at companies that submit details to U.S. regulators. That puts her at No. 6 on the list, after five men, and marks the first time a woman has cracked the Top 10 since the index was created in 2015. Whitman, 60, the CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., is No. 2 with $52.5 million in her first year leading the maker of corporate software and hardware, following its split from parent Hewlett-Packard Co. Her package includes stock options and restricted shares linked to performance. Companies often grant big equity awards to executives in their first year on the job. See also: The Data Center Industry Has a Problem: Too Many Men Catz, 55, who was the top-paid female executive for 2015 after she was promoted to co-CEO of Oracle Corp., is third with $39.2 million. Her compensation fell since the board scaled back executive awards following years of shareholder complaints, and she didn’t get an annual bonus after Oracle’s profit slid. Fourteen women made the list for 2016 pay, compared with 17 a year earlier. The index values equity awards at each company’s fiscal year-end. Compensation figures can therefore differ from those disclosed in regulatory filings, in some cases by a lot, depending on stock-price moves and dividend payouts. Those at the top of the ranking benefited as tech stocks were among the best performers in the U.S. last year. The S&P 500 Technology Hardware and Equipment Index climbed 15 percent, outpacing the 9.5 percent advance for the broader benchmark, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index logged its fifth straight year of gains. Rometty’s awards include a one-time grant of premium-priced stock options that surged in value after IBM shares rallied 21 percent in 2016. Marissa Mayer, Yahoo! Inc.’s outgoing CEO, took fourth with $32.8 million for the year she orchestrated a sale of the firm to Verizon Communications Inc. The board withheld her 2016 bonus after it was revealed that hacks of the web portal had exposed hundreds of millions of users’ personal information. Part of her pay comes in stock that’s linked to performance. Mayer, 41, will step down from the board when the deal is completed. Phebe Novakovic, 59, who’s led General Dynamics Corp. since 2013, was fifth with $30.6 million in awarded compensation. The value of her options and stock grants, some of which are linked to performance targets set by the maker of Abrams tanks and nuclear submarines, jumped along with defense stocks in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. The top-ranked executives or their representatives declined to comment or didn’t respond to requests for comment. Topping the Bloomberg Pay Index for 2016 is Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s online chief Marc Lore, who received $236.9 million in awarded compensation, the bulk of it from shares that were part of the purchase price for his Jet.com Inc. Apple Inc.’s Tim Cook took second and Evercore Partners Inc.’s John S. Weinberg was third. (Comment on this)
9:44p	DCK Investor Edge: Why Money is Pouring Into Data Centers Welcome to DCK Investor Edge, our new weekly column on all things related to data center investing authored by Bill Stoller, a financial writer and analyst and regular DCK contributor. Bill sits at the intersection of Wall Street and Main Street, where real estate intersects trends in technology, retailing, office/industrial, residential, healthcare, energy infrastructure, and green initiatives. Read more about why we think a column on data center investing is a good idea here. And here’s the first edition of DCK Investor Edge: Publicly Traded REITs A quick look at the April 28, 2017 real estate investment trust (REIT) sector recap below shows that commercial real estate was essentially flat during the first four months of trading in 2017. Data center outperformance versus more traditional real estate asset classes (office, hotels, apartments, industrial, self-storage, shopping centers, etc.) was striking (click chart to enlarge). Source: Seeking Alpha – Hoya Capital Real Estate The data center REIT sector price appreciation also handily outperformed the broader S&P 500 Index, by more than double. Digital Realty and Equinix are both S&P 500 companies. This type of outperformance is what is attracting the institutional funds to the sector. Meanwhile, data center industry pros and individual investors can participate by owning shares in the publicly traded REITs. In addition to the two large-cap REITs mentioned above, CoreSite Realty, CyrusOne, DuPont Fabros, and QTS Realty round out the sector. There are other notable publicly traded companies, including — Iron Mountain, NTT (Raging Wire), and Corporate Office Properties Trust — which also are active in data center development. However, the impact of their data center operations is overshadowed by their respective core businesses. Europe and Asia Pan-Europe: Interxion Holdings N.V. shares trade on the NYSE under the symbol (INXN) with a $3 billion market cap, and have returned ~25% for investors year-to-date. No dividend is paid. Interxion operates the broadest footprint of connectivity-focused data centers across Europe. China: GDS Holdings, Inc. filed a US IPO last November priced at $10.00 per ADS, or American Depository Share which trade on NASDAQ. GDS is down about 3 percent year-to-date. No dividend is paid. Read more: DCK Exclusive: Chinese Data Center Leader GDS Holdings – IPO Update GDS operates data centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Hong Kong. GDS is a 50/50 hybrid between wholesale and retail/colo data centers. The top three tenants, likely Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent, account for 47 percent of annual revenues. Transparency The other reason that investors and industry pros should pay attention to the publicly traded REITs and data center operators is the requirement to report earnings and file quarterly and annual reports with the SEC. REIT management teams also host quarterly conference calls to discuss results, and post presentations and Supplemental information on their investor relations websites. It is much harder to gain access to accurate information regarding revenues and earnings from the privately held companies and non-traded REITs. Data Center Knowledge works behind the scenes to obtain accurate information from industry pros, consultants, brokers, and management, and report it to our readers in a timely fashion. REIT Investing 101 While megawatts, N+1 resiliency, and gigabytes are familiar terms to data center professionals, the financial jargon contained in REIT earnings reports can be confusing. The most important thing for investors to realize about REIT valuations is that the P/E, or price earnings ratio, commonly used to value traditional corporations, is not useful for real estate investment trusts. This is the biggest mistake most new investors make, as financial portals rarely report the REIT metrics that matter: Funds from Operations (FFO) and AFFO (which is FFO adjusted for maintenance capex, straight-line rents, and other non-cash amortizations). AFFO is also referred to as Funds or Cash Available for Distribution (FAD/CAD). This is the REIT cash flow that is used to pay the quarterly dividend. The biggest difference between GAAP earnings and FFO is that property depreciation (a non-cash expense) is added back, along with other adjustments. It is important for investors to compare how REITs calculate and report terms like operating FFO, core FFO, normalized FFO. It can be a slippery slope. NAREIT FFO is usually considered to be the baseline, or gold standard. Additionally, REITs which are more active on the acquisition front often report pro-forma results — either including or excluding revenues — with adjustments for one-time M&A fees and expenses. It can be challenging to analyze and compare year-over-year results when there have been major acquisitions, such as the Equinix $3.6 billion Verizon deal. Show Me the Money REITs are popular with income-focused investors because by law they must pay out at least 90% of taxable income to shareholders in the form of dividends. This means that REITs do not retain earnings and must access both the debt and equity markets on a regular basis to fund new development or grow by acquisitions. However, new investors are often confused when they learn that many REITs payout much less than 90% of cash available for distribution as dividends. Remember, a lot of this cash flow is from “depreciation,” a non-cash bookkeeping entry. A low FFO/AFFO payout ratio provides a margin of safety for shareholders. It helps to ensure the dividend will not be cut, (and is more likely to be raised in the future), while providing operating cash flow to reinvest in growing the core business, or strengthening the balance sheet. On top of price appreciation, if any, the six US-based publicly traded data center REITs as of this writing pay quarterly dividend distributions with annual yields of ~2%-4%. REIT investors love their dividends. One of the attractions of data centers is the ability to grow this distribution at a rapid clip relative to other real estate asset classes. In addition to covering investing and business news for Data Center Knowledge, Bill Stoller is an Expert Contributor for REITs on Seeking Alpha. The information contained in this article is not investment advice. Disclaimer: Bill Stoller’s REITs 4 Alpha Seeking Alpha Marketplace portfolio includes: COR, CONE and DFT. A member of his household in a retirement account owns: COR, CONE and DFT. (Comment on this)
9:44p	Introducing: DCK Investor Edge, a Weekly Data Center Investing Column It is hard to believe that it has only been a year and half since I started covering investing and business news for Data Center Knowledge readers. The six publicly traded data center REITs have seen multiple expansions, while Wall Street analysts and savvy retail investors have begun to overweight data centers. The industry is evolving quickly, as more institutions, pension funds, and private equity firms view data centers as the premier opportunity for attractive risk-adjusted returns in commercial real estate. There have been dozens of mergers and acquisitions, as companies vie to grow market share. The confluence of data centers and future 5G wireless networks could become disruptive, as privately held firms like Digital Bridge and EdgeConneX focus on wireless infrastructure and content delivery. That is why we are rolling out DCK Investor Edge, the new weekly data center investing column, as part of Data Center Knowledge’s expanding coverage of industry news and events. The ability to closely cover news and developments across the full spectrum of private, non-traded, and publicly traded companies ideally will create an investing edge. Read the first DCK Investor Edge post here: Why Money is Pouring Into Data Centers (Comment on this)

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