E-Oasis Alerts

Hopefully, none of my blog visitors are “weak sauce”! Just remember it’s not possible to be a SuperStar without some weak sauce.

General, Lessons Learned

Enterprises are cutting operational expenses for 2009. Common expense reduction items cited include:

• Eliminate Travel
• Eliminate Training
• Cut Contractors
• Layoff Employees
• Extended shutdown during the Holidays
• Eliminate employee reimbursements for cell phones and Internet access
• Eliminate trade show exhibits
• Reduce Management bonuses
• Reduce Staff salaries
• Stop Hiring
• Consolidate or eliminate physical locations

However, even an arm-chair economist knows that cutting expenses alone does not ensure business survival. Now that the latest job loss numbers are out, the acceleration effect those job losses have on confidence and other industries will be telling. This effect will be fueled by media-led fear-based metaphors and inaction by those watching the panic parade.

After you’ve cut the expense side of the equation ( one hint: Kill your Weak IT Projects Right Now), what are you doing about the demand side of the equation?

The C-Suite can not legitimately hide behind “unexpected weaker demand” and fail to act.  By now, who doesn’t expect weaker demand?

The question is, what are you doing to stimulate the demand for your products and services given the economic downdraft?

General, Lessons Learned

Cloud computing enjoys the current marketing hyperbole cycle and vendor marketing departments know that. Everyone wants to be the leader in the cloud.

However, like “Web 2.0″ before it, it’s questionable if the term “Cloud Computing” can be used in any meaningful way. There are efforts to create a taxonomy of meaning to keep track of all the objects living in the cloud.

Cloud Computing = Off-Premise Computing

The only delineation seems to be if the computing takes place on-premise or off-premise. If it’s off-premise, then marketing will brand it Cloud Computing. You’re reading this blog in the Cloud which makes E-Oasis and you a Cloud user.

Practically, Enterprise businesses will continue to rely on their on-premise computing. The reasons are easy to understand. Let’s look at just two:

• Performance - Users want good response time. Most Enterprises can’t afford the bandwidth required to locate their computing off-premise (i.e. “In The Cloud”) and still deliver a satisfactory user experience. The math is simple. A typical user desktop has a  dedicated 10/100/1000 mbit/sec connection to their servers versus a shared Internet connection that is typically less than 45 mbit/sec and more often around 5 mbit/sec. Common tasks like file sharing in an Enterprise would be glacially slow. We won’t even discuss redundancy (i.e. multiple Internet connections to the cloud).
• Security - Corporations can’t even keep their own on-premise data properly classified or secured. Do you believe they will allow third parties to manage this important function? They’re not and they won’t.

If you use off-premise computing, it’s just a matter of time before your marketing department highlights that fact in a Proud Cloud Press Release. Take some comfort that this term will fall back to earth as soon as another one can take it’s place at the hyperbole feeding frenzy.

A $100 Billion Dollar Market?

Don’t forget that the First International Cloud Computing Expo is happening on the 19th of November if you just can’t get enough Cloud. After all, we have experts predicting that this is a $100 Billion dollar market. Did that get your attention?

That should be an easy number to achieve and may even be low. After all, Cloud Computing is just the sum of all off-premise computing. To achieve any meaningful adoption rates for the Enterprise, the pipes connecting the Enterprise to off-premise computing must both get fatter (more bandwidth) and cheaper. Way cheaper.

General, Networks, Technology

The predictable reports of  CAPEX (Capital Operating EXpenditure) and OPEX (Operational EXpenditure) cuts (not just in Information Technology) have already surfaced. Sales projections for public companies are being slashed on a daily basis.

“Weaker than expected demand” seems to be the favorite language. Does anyone in the C-Suite really fail to expect weaker demand? That’s unlikely given the kind of daily data available to every business.

Analyze your customer base with the knowledge that they are or will be forced to cut both CAPEX and OPEX and identify the necessary products and services they can’t live without. If you’re not already supplying one of those products and services, then expect the weaker demand for your organization.

Almost every company of any size has IT (Information Technology) projects at various stages of completion. Many of these may have substantial resources dedicated towards them and yet they wander in the desert of incompleteness. Can you afford this?

Kill your weak IT projects now. It may be painful, but it’s long overdue and you know it. You are wasting resources that you’re going to need to combat the “weaker than expected demand”. The first place you should re-deploy those resources are into those IT projects that have a direct impact on keeping your company competitive.

• Finish that Exchange cut-over and kill the old servers.
• Actually retire those servers you replaced with VMware.
• Upgrade your storage to the higher capacity drives with the lower power consumption and get rid of the old storage.
• Consolidate or move your data centers into more efficient and cost-effective space.

Finally, Dan Rua reminds us not to neglect the interpersonal opportunities that adversity can bring. Reach out to a trusted adviser. You may be able to help each other with your respective challenges.

General, Lessons Learned

Data about job losses, housing starts and foreclosures, venture capital pull-backs and stock market volatility can be used to justify almost any thesis. Watching the panic parade play out in both traditional and online media has resulted in at least one identifiable outcome from the C-Suite: Fooled into Inaction.

Whatever thesis you subscribe to, shouldn’t you be taking some kind of appropriate corrective action to match your conviction?

I found three good and recent examples in predictable places to illustrate the kind of critical thinking that can help you break from the crowd to form your own roadmap. The first is from Irving Wladawsky-Berger. There’s a lot to digest in his post, but Diversification, Mass Extinction, and Survival poses this central question: What can a company do to maximize its chances of survival at such times?

Attempting to answer that question for your business is likely a better use of your time than marching in the Panic Parade.

The second example comes from Chuck Hollis. “Better Times Ahead For Service Providers?” suggests some reasons why a downturn could help these types of businesses. More importantly, you can learn  from Chuck’s reasoning and apply to your own business. He’s spot on with the notion that “Transparency of Costs” will be something that will become familiar to all.

The difference-maker for business will be those that deal now with many of these issues while the paralyzed enjoy the parade!

Finally, Brad Feld put up a guest post he received via e-mail from Sarah Reed. I found The Legal Lexicon for an Economic Meltdown a refreshing and humorous reminder that this has all happened before. Humor is a necessary stimulant for critical thinking.

Survive or Thrive?

Remember that while you’re watching the parade, there are other individuals doing the planning  to thrive in the current climate.

General, Lessons Learned

The Boulder County Business Report disclosed the news that Longmont, CO will be home to three 50,000 square foot data centers. Broadband Utilities, based in Dallas, chose land adjacent to the recently completed Honda North Amercan Data Center project.

Longmont is already home to some well-known organizations and interest remains high among prospects looking to relocate more than their data centers to the area. We had the pleasure of meeting with John Drossos, chief exectuive officer of Broadband Utilities, during one of his site visits to Longmont. These new data centers will satisfy the pent-up demand as well as benefit from the increased focus on geographic diversity to avoid downtime.

Of course, if you’re planning on relocating your data center, you’ll want to get our data center moving guide.

DataCenters, Welcome

Intel announced it is establishing a presence in Longmont, Colorado joining a who’s who of companies in the area. Of course IBM, just a few miles from Longmont, is one of the earliest and well-known technology giants that have shaped Longmont. Here are a few others:

Chips and Semiconductors

Broadcom Corporation
Fujitsu Computer Products of America
Intelliprop
LSI Storage Peripherals Group
Marvell Semiconductor
National Semiconductor
NUTEK Americas Inc.
STMicorelectronics
Synkera Technologies, Inc.
Texas Instruments
Xilinx

Storage and Peripherals

Conduant Corporation
COPAN Systmes
Data Storage Group
DataPlay
Dot Hill Systems Corporation
Emulex
ExcelStor Technology, Inc.
InPhase Technologies
Mountain Optech, Inc.
MP Tapes, Inc.
Pillar Data Systems
Pineree Peripherals, Inc.
Rebit, Inc.
Seagate Technology
Storage Genetics, Inc.
Western Digital Corporation

Biotech

Alpharma
Amgen
Array BioPharma, Inc.
Cevan Nutritionals
Chemizon
MicroPhage, Inc.
RMC Pharmaceutical Solutions, Inc.

Aerospace

ABSL Space Products
Custom Microwave, Inc.
DigitalGlobe (recently filed for IPO)
Earthmap Solutions (acquired by Monsanto)
Redstone Aerospace

With the increased interest from prospects in relocations, the addition of Intel bodes well for the future of corporate relocations to the area. Our data center moving guide is a great resource for those with a computer room or data center that needs to be moved.

DataCenters, General, Welcome

While I don’t agree with some of Chuck’s predicted trends in Next Generation Data Centers, this post isn’t about those disagreements. I think it’s important to highlight the value of his observation about Information Technology (IT) at significant scale.

We move data centers of all sizes. The difference in these data centers, regardless of physical size, is stark when someone was worried about what it means to architect, design, and implement Information Technology with scaling in mind.  You don’t have to be a large IT shop to worry about scale. You do have to  understand why investing in point solutions can be very costly for your organization versus investing in something that is designed to scale.

This means often actively resisting the marketing themes that make instant trade press architects out of technical and non-technical people alike. You’ll find Chuck Hollis talking about these themes also — most recently in his Adventures in Server Marketing.

Scale matters.

If you live in the C-Suite, make sure you understand scale even better than your IT Division.

DataCenters, Lessons Learned

With the advent of virtualization, particularly VMware’s VDI (Virtual Desktop Interface), much has been written about pairing a thin hardware client with VDI to ease administration and control costs.  This hardware, however, still costs in the range of $300 to $800 per unit. Contrasted to a desktop PC, sometimes there is no savings on the hardware giving little incentive to roll out a thin client plus VDI environment.

Arguments such as “management nightmare”, “simplified support model”, and “less moving parts” don’t measure up to the economic realities that thin clients don’t bring a significant cost savings over a desktop deployment strategy.

Thin isn’t in because it’s not cheap enough to motivate an economic decision.

General, Technology

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Virtualization