New Florence. New Renaissance.

Next-gen hyperscaler data centers

“Microsoft, announced a 20-year deal with Constellation to re-open Pennsylvania's shuttered Three Mile Island nuclear plant to provide a new energy source for data centers powering AI development and other technologies. But even if that deal is approved by regulators, the resulting energy supply that Microsoft could access—roughly 835 megawatts (0.835 gigawatts) of energy generation, which is enough to power approximately 800,000 homes—is still more than five times less than OpenAI's 5-gigawatt demand for its data centers.”

“While energy demands for AI data centers continue to spike, there is a possibility that the companies could update AI software and hardware to operate more efficiently over time. But that will take time, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang doesn't think demand for AI computing will slow down any time soon, estimating that the world will need about "$1 trillion worth of new data centers in the next four to five years," The Information reported.”

ARS Technica

These next-gen data centers will dwarf today’s – most of which dont even scale to 100 megawatts. Graph of biggest concentrations from Visual Capitalist

 

Meta’s huge Dutch data center

I had profiled Facebook’s Prineville, OR data center in a case study in a 2012 book. It was very innovative for its time – see an excerpt here 

A decade later, Meta is planning a massive new facility in Europe as Ars Technica describes

“Amsterdam is home to a major Internet exchange, which distributes traffic from data centers nearby, and it has attracted tech giants looking for better connectivity and fiber to set up giant, "hyperscale" data centers to process their own data nearby.

Microsoft built the first hyperscale in the Netherlands in 2015. Since then, two more have been built, and that number is expected to grow, according to trade group the Dutch Data Center Association. But Meta's plan for the Zeewolde site, known as Tractor Field 4, is by far the biggest yet. It would span 166 hectares, the equivalent of more than 1,300 Olympic swimming pools, and would devour 1,380 gigawatt-hours of energy a year, at least double what the municipality's 22,000 residents consume in the same period.”

The video below is in Dutch but gives you a glimpse at the location, the dimensions and the concerns of the local residents

Burning Platform Series on hot enterprise topics

Update - after Brian and I did the first 12 episodes, I have been inviting other market observers and practitioners to the series.

Brian Sommer and I go back nearly 30 years. We look at issues from very different perspectives but have a healthy respect for our differences. We have been called the "Penn and Teller" of Enterprise Technology because we tend to be both educational and entertaining about trends in software, outsourcing and many other issues that affect C level execs in enterprises.

We collaborate on a number of advisory projects and talk on a regular basis. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our conversations have moved to Zoom. We thought it would be fun to share some of our on-going conversations about enterprise technology. 

Notice on the cover of each episode how cool the man is, even in the face of the raging fire. That is a good metaphor for how we approach enterprise problems. We will share these on a regular basis, minus much of the snark, family talk and politics that creeps into our conversations. We expect to average 1-2 a week. It is a roughly 10-20 minute format. Below are links to each episode. 

Look forward to your feedback, and the opportunity to help you through complex enterprise issues. And do so with much needed humor in these crazy times!

1. Eulogy for On-Premise Apps 
2. Bumper Quarter 
3. School buses or RVs 
4. The WTF about WFH 
5. Analytics, new management science
6. The Post-Pandemic world of the CFO
7. The Post-Pandemic world of the CHRO
8. The Post-Pandemic world of the CIO
9. Software - Feast or Famine
10. Why does my software not have its own passport?
11. COVID morphing of digital transformations
12. Career advice for new tech world
13. Wall Street and Enterprise Software with guest Rob Kugel
14. Mediocre, Myopic or Merry? with guest Josh Greenbaum
15. Project Management in the age of COVID with guest Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel
16. A Curmudgeon Christmas Greeting Card with guests Frank Scavo of Avasant and Dennis Howlett of Diginomica
17. Diversity Trends in Tech with guest Cindy Jutras of Mint Jutras
18. Services and other Industry solutions with guest Dave Hofferberth of SPI Research
19. Architectural Trends in Enterprise Software with guest Holger Mueller of Constellation Research 
20. Digital Acceleration with guest Tamas Hevizi of Automation Anywhere
21. Supply chain resilience and renewal with Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters
22. Pandemic and Tech AR/PR with Sabrina Horn of Horn Strategy Consulting
23. A Christmas Carol with Sandy Lo of Zoho
24. Cloud Wars! with Bob Evans of Evans Strategic Communications
25. SAP Projects in Asia Pac with Paul Coetser of Big Blue Ventures
26. Business Continuity with Mark Smith of Ventana Research 
27. A review of RISE with SAP with Dennis Howlett of Diginomica
28. Exciting world of Citizen IT with Amit Zavery of Google Cloud
29. More on RISE with SAP with Geoff Scott of ASUG
30. Evolving expectations of CX with Mark Taylor of Cognizant Digital Experience
31. Developers, developers...with James Governor of Redmonk
32. Modern Decisioning with Bret Greenstein of Cognizant
33. Global Grand Challenges with Jyoti Banerjee of North Star Transition
34. Startup Communities with Brad Feld of Foundry Group and Ian Hathaway of Techstars
35. Entrepreneurial Trends with Brad Feld of Foundry Group and Ian Hathaway of Techstars
36. Relentless Amazon with Simon Gaster, author Behemoth, Amazon Rising
37. Amazon, automation and society with Simon Gaster, author Behemoth, Amazon Rising
38. Digital Nomads with Mark Brooks of Courtland Brooks
39. 25 years of "As a service" with Phil Wainewright of Diginomica and Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies
40. The future of "As a service" with Phil Wainewright of Diginomica and Jeff Kaplan of THINKstrategies
41. More work from Anywhere with Tammie Hilend of Maxar Technologies
42. Work anywhere: Tertiary Towns and Rural Revival with Raju Vegesna of Zoho Software
43. Industry Clouds with Jujhar Singh of Salesforce
44. Workday Nation with Webb Armentrout of Workday
45. Data-infused apps with Pete Schlampp of Workday
46. More work anywhere with Monty Hamilton of Rural Sourcing
47. The end of ERP? with Patricia Harris of Workday
48. Not your grandpa's service economy with Peter Bendor-Samuel of Everest Group
49. Leading with authenticity with Sabrina Horn of Horn Strategy
50. Ecosystems Galore with Tyler Prince of Salesforce
51. Labor Shortages, Mindsets and other Talent Trends with Fred Goff of Jobcase
52. Customer Service as Competitive Advantage with Sarah Nicastro of IFS
53. AI in the Enterprise with Roy Altman of Peopleserv
54. Servitization Trends - Part 1 with Marne Martin and Mark Brewer of IFS
55. Servitization Trends - Part 2 with Marne Martin and Mark Brewer of IFS
56. Acronyms, Buzzwords and Customer Realities with Jon Reed of Diginomica
57. Flashing Red Lights around Green Policy with Kurt Marko of MarkoVision
58. HR: what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger with Stacey Harris of Sapient Insights
59. Supply Chains: the good, the bad and the ugly with Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters
60. Generational shift in Content creation, distribution and consumption - Part 1 with Paul Greenberg of The 56 Group
61. Generational shift in Content creation, distribution and consumption - Part 2 with Paul Greenberg of The 56 Group
62. Curmudgeon Christmas - Part 1 with Dennis Howlett
63. Curmudgeon Christmas - Part 2 with Dennis Howlett
64. Innovations and Verticals Trends in ERP for SMEs with Rainer Zinow of SAP and Jory Lamb of VistaVu solutions
65. Analyzing the Analysts with Duncan Chapple of Analyst Observatory, U of Edinburgh
66. Christmas Musical Card with Bonnie Tinder of Raven Intel

 

GitHub's thousand year archive

GitHub, the software collaboration platform recently acquired by Microsoft, will store 6,000 software repositories in long-term storage.

The open-source software will be stored at Piql's data center in Svalbard, known as the Arctic World Archive. Instead of hard drives or tape, the company uses its own proprietary film which is designed to last for 1,000 years.

The selected collection includes the source code for the Linux and Android operating systems; the programming languages Python, Ruby, and Rust; web platforms Node, V8, React, and Angular; cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Ethereum; AI tools TensorFlow and FastAI; and more. GitHub will store all active public repositories as of February 2, 2020.

Data Center Dynamics

 

 

 

 

50% of us live near the coast. Why doesn’t our data?

Project Natick seeks to understand the benefits and difficulties in deploying subsea datacenters worldwide. Phase two extends the research we accomplished in phase one by deploying a full-scale datacenter module in the North Sea, powered by renewable energy.

Microsoft

Facebook’s Open Compute tackles telecom infrastructure

I profiled Facebook’s Open Compute initiative as it launched its Prineville data center in the New Technology Elite. Now it is tackling the telecom infrastructure side

“To that end, we recently started working with a few partners on Open Packet DWDM — a packet transponder and open line transport system with open optical specifications that enable any interested party to contribute systems, components, or software. Today we’re excited to announce Voyager, a networking solution for Open Packet DWDM networks — and what we believe is the industry’s first “white box” transponder and routing solution. Our partners have helped us successfully test Voyager and begin to build an ecosystem around it. We plan to contribute the design to TIP via the Backhaul: Open Optical Packet Transport (OOPT) project group, with the aim of encouraging more open and programmable network architectures.”

Facebook

 

 

The Queen of Chaos

Sometimes this team makes Martians invade the earth. Sometimes they feign an earthquake or ecological disaster.

They strike their internal Google targets without warning.

This is Google’s renowned DiRT team, (Disaster Recovery Testing), led by director Kripa Krishnan, who has perfected the art of breaking Google over the past nine years.

Business Insider

The New Trading Floor

The security at NY4 bears this out. To get from the parking lot to a spot where you could touch one of the servers you’d have to go through five checkpoints. One of them is a so-called man trap with two automatic steel doors that never open at the same time. Your palm print is required twice in addition to your PIN code. A wall of video monitors captures every nook and cranny of the 338,000-square-foot building.

Once you’re in, the space is enveloped by a rush of white noise from the thousands of computer fans whirring away to keep the servers cool. To help maintain the temperature, the ceiling is 45 feet high, roughly four stories up. It’s barely visible—not just because of its height, but also thanks to all of the suspended trays of cables and cooling ducts running overhead. All this goes toward one statistic: Equinix says in its annual filing that it kept its facilities up and running 99.9999 percent of the time in 2015.

Bloomberg Markets

Submarine data center?

Microsoft says underwater data centers would be ideal in many ways. First, they can help reduce cooling costs and emissions from a regular data center by taking advantage of the lower surrounding temperatures for cooling, though the capsule doesn’t actually consume water for cooling.

An underwater capsule can also be built and deployed within 90 days. That’s a great turnaround time if your cloud service needs extra help during a major event like the Super Bowl, when tons of users want to access their data in a specific location. A Project Natick vessel could also be dropped off the coast of a disaster zone to enable faster access to data when it counts.

Finally, about half the world’s population lives within 124 miles (200 kilometers) of the ocean. Placing datacenters offshore brings them closer to more users, which in turn would make latency (the time it takes data to transfer from a server to your PC or smartphone) goes down dramatically.

PC World

CERN Science Heaven

Hundreds of millions of particle collisions take place every second, at the heart of LHC's detectors. The sensors generate about one petabyte of data every second, an amount no computing system in the world could be able to store if it was generated for any prolonged period.

Most of the data is discarded quickly, as sophisticated systems select what could be of interest for the scientists and filter out the clutter. Then, tens of thousands of processor cores go even further and choose just one percent of the remaining events - information which then gets stored and is later analyzed by physicists.

The datacenter can save 6GB of data per second at the peak rate of the LHC. However, this gigantic machine doesn't run 24/7. "We're expecting about 30 petabytes per year of LHC run two - that would represent something like 250 years of high-definition video," Frédéric Hemmer, IT department head, told ZDNet.