Data Center World: AFCOM News Snackables

We’ll have lots of coverage recapping Data Center World in coming days. But here are some DCW news “snackables” - easily-digested infonuggets from the show that may not merit entire stories, but I found interesting nonetheless.

Attendance is Down: There are between 700 and 800 attendees at this year’s conference, according to AFCOM. That’s a significant drop from last year’s record attendance of more than 1,300 at the spring event (which typically draws a larger crowd than the fall DCW show). Both events were in Las Vegas. The lower turnout was not surprising, as AFCOM’s research showed that many companies are slashing travel and training budgets as part of broader cost-cutting initiatives. Still, it was an interesting contrast to last week’s DataCenterDynamics conference in New York, which drew more than 950 attendees, a slight increase from the 2008 DCD event in New York. The different format - DataCenterDynamics holds one-day shows in major data center markets - suggests that data center managers are willing to attend conferences that are close to home. Given the country’s somber economic mood, Las Vegas may be a particularly hard sell for corporate travel approvals.

Cities and States Are Still Chasing Data Centers: This week I saw more economic development agencies with booths than I’ve ever seen at an industry expo, and many were from the Midwest, which is hungry for data centers. State-level economic development agencies from Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota and Virginia all had booths, as did local development groups representing Omaha, southern Virginia and Temple, Texas. If you have a large project looking for a home, you have many friends in state capitols.

The InterCloud is Coming: Buzz alert: watch for the phrase “InterCloud” to grow in adoption. The phrase has been widely used by Cisco in describing its view of cloud computing, and was invoked in Tuesday’s keynote by Sun Microsystems CTO Greg Papadopoulos. “There’s not going to be a single network, but we will have this global network of clouds, segmented into subclouds and intraclouds,” he said to accompany an “InterCloud” slide.

Data Center World: Day 1 Roundup

Tuesday was a busy day at the AFCOM Data Center World spring conference in Las Vegas. Here’s a recap of our coverage of yesterday’s keynotes, presentations and panels:

• Sun Cloud Will Live at the Vegas SuperNAP: Sun has “thousands of cores” at Switch Communications’ mammoth new data center in Las Vegas.
• Five Bold Predictions, Three Years Later: AFCOM’s Data Center Institute revisits its 2006 predictions to see how they’ve been impacted by the economic crisis.
• Capital Concerns Boost Interest in Colocation: Cost-cutting is leading more companies to consider outsourcing their infrastructure to colocation facilities rather than building new data centers.

Here are some links to noteworthy coverage from other media outlets tracking the conference:

• Budget Cuts May be Bigger threat to Reliability Than Y2K: Patrick Thibodeau from ComputerWorld takes a closer look at the research findings from AFCOM on the economic impact of cost-cutting.
• AFCOM’s Five Predictions Bode Well for Green: Greener Computing sees benefits for energy efficiency in the fact that C-level executives are paying much closer attention to spending on their mission-critical data center infrastructure.
• Sun Exec Pushes Cloud to Wary Data Center Managers: Mark Fontecchio at Tech Target examines the disconnect between the cloud-centric keynote by Sun CTO Greg Papadopoulos and the cloud-phobic attitude revealed in AFCOM’s members surveys.

Five Bold Predictions, Three Years Later

AFCOM’s Data Center Institute is perhaps best known for its Five Bold Predictions, a 2006 research projects that looked at key issues in the data center. The group has revisited those predictions with another survey of AFCOM’s user base of data center managers to see how the original findings have been altered by the financial crisis. We’ll dig deeper on some of these over the next few days, but let’s start with a look at AFCOM’s predictions and their update:

Prediction 1: By 2015, the talent pool of qualified senior level technical and management data center professionals will shrink by 45 percent.

“Due to the recession, the shrinking of the talent pool of senior level technical and management data center professionals has actually sped up,” reports AFCOM founder Leonard Eckhaus. AFCOM’s recent survey of its membership showed that 9.6 percent of all data centers expect staff cuts as part of broader cost-cutting initiatives.

Those cuts come against the backdrop of an aging data center workforce. AFCOM more than 60 percent of all IT workers with mainframe experience are at least 50 years old. “We’ve been looking for a mainframe person now for three years,” said Tom Roberts, director of data center facilities at the Trinity Health hospital chain.

That means some data center managers are working longer. “In many cases older, higher paid employees, the ones with the most knowledge and experience, have been offered buy-outs and this has resulted in many taking early retirement and not reentering the work force,” said Eckhaus. “Of course, the other side of this is that with many people being layed off and retiring, the demand for that knowledge is higher than ever, so some people who were panning to retire, but have lost too much of their investment savings, are continuing to work because they can no longer afford to retire.”

Prediction #2: By 2010, more than half of all data centers will have to relocate to new facilities or outsource some applications.

“This has slowed down,” said Eckhaus. “Our most recent survey shows that 40.1 percent of all data centers cutting budgets will have to delay or cancel a planned physical expansion or relocation. Because of this, we believe we’ll see an increase in outsourcing as data center space gets tighter and capital spending drains up.”

News from Data Center World

The Data Center World 2009 spring conference is now underway in Las Vegas, and AFCOM says it is expecting more than 700 data center professionals to attend. A number of companies have announced new products and services timed to the conference. Here’s a roundup: 

• Wright Line announced that its Heat Containment System (HCS) is now available for third-party server enclosures including APC and Chatsworth Products. Wright Line’s HCS integrates seamlessly into an existing cooling infrastructure and is designed to capture, manage and direct the heat exhaust from IT equipment to the top rear of the enclosure, where it is ducted to the data center’s precision air conditioning units through a ceiling plenum or hot air returns. “Adapting existing enclosures to the heat containment system can eliminate the need to spend additional capital on equipment such as perimeter, in the row or overhead CRACs/CRAH’s and other supplemental cooling devices,” said Carl Cottuli, Vice President of Product Development and Services for Wright Line.
• Global DataCenter Management (GDCM) today announced that its nlyte management solution has achieved technical validation from BMC Software for use with the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite, a leading Business Service Management (BSM) solution. GDCM’s nlyte data center management solution enables users to initiate and monitor routine equipment processes within the BMC Remedy suite. “The GDCM integration to BMC Remedy … allows customers to realize new efficiencies and better allocate resources to support strategy,” said Krishna Prasad, BMC Software’s general manager for Service Support Software. “GDCM brings significant expertise in managing the physical datacenter infrastructure, providing increased functionality and value to our mutual customers.”

AFCOM: Data Centers Face Budget Cuts

More than a third of data center managers say they have been asked to cut their data center budgets for 2009, according new data from AFCOM, the industry group for data center professionals. The survey results, taken in late November, show that the economic crisis is having an impact on data center spending, but that any belt-tightening will be far from apocalyptic.

Thirty eight percent of managers surveyed by AFCOM said they have been asked to cut data center spending, with the average goal being a 15 percent reduction in the data center budget. Of those making cuts, 20 percent said they would delay or cancel a planned physical expansion of relocation. That equates to about 8 percent of all respondents.

Here’s a look at AFCOM’s breakdown of where managers say their cuts will be targeted:

The areas taking the biggest hits are travel and training, which suggests 2009 may be a challenging year for data center conferences.

Local Chapters Fuel AFCOM Growth

In a week filled with chatter about an economic downturn and cost-cutting, last week’s Data Center World in Orlando, Fla. had the largest turnout ever for the fall version of the trade show, with more than 700 attendees. While smaller than the spring version of DCW conference - which had 1,300 attendees for the 2008 version in Las Vegas – this year’s Data Center World Fall event benefited from the rising profile of the data center industry.

“The data center industry is so pertinent today,” said Jill Eckhaus, the CEO of AFCOM. “For the first time in history, the data center has been recognized as an integral part of every business. That’s really why AFCOM was founded: to help recognize how important the data center has become.”

AFCOM is a leading association for data center professionals, founded in 1980 to support the management of data centers around the world. Originally, AFCOM was an acronym for the “Association for Computer Operations Management,” but has since expanded its focus to the entire data center and become known simply as AFCOM. In the past five years, AFCOM has been transformed along with the industry it represents, growing from 1,700 members to more than 4,200. The biggest growth has been local.

“Five years ago we had seven local chapters and today we have 35,” said Eckhaus, who noted that AFCOM is also seeing strong growth among overseas members, both in attendance at the conference and the launch of local data center user groups.

Few Data Center Managers Report Budget Cuts

Forty three percent of data center managers say they expect their 2009 budget to increase, according a survey of members of AFCOM, the industry group for data center professionals. The survey was released Monday during the keynote session for AFCOM’s Data Center World Fall conference in Orlando, Fla.

The good news: the findings suggest that investment in data center services is positioned to remain strong, as companies are either continuing to invest in data center services, maintaining their budgets or targeting their cuts in other areas.

The bad news: the survey of more than 300 data center managers was conducted in May. Although the credit crunch was already affecting the economy at that time, budgets have almost certainly come under additional scrutiny in recent weeks due to the global financial crisis.

AFCOM Launches: Liebert, Vette, GDCM, PDI

There were a number of product launches tied to the AFCOM Data Center World conference in Las Vegas. Here’s a quick summary and links to new products and services introduced by Emerson Network power (Liebert), GDCM, Vette Corp. and PDI Inc.

• Emerson Network Power (EMR) unveiled the first models of its new Liebert NXL UPS platform designed for medium and large data centers. Initial models of this on-line double conversion UPS are available in 250 kVA, 300 kVA and 400 kVA ratings. Peter Panfil, VP of Power Engineering for Liebert, said the NX models include SoftScale technology, which allows Liebert to unlock additional capacity in the NX unit upon customer request. SoftScale gives the customers the flexibility to easily increase UPS capacity by 20 or 40 kVA, without purchasing additional equipment. A site visit by a Liebert rep is required to unlock the additional capacity.
• UK data center specialist GDCM, which has expanded into the US market in recent months, announced the release of nlyte Express software. The new product is designed for data centers managed by a small team that needs the ability to centrally manage and model equipment changes. nlyte Express provides full data center visualization, physical infrastructure capacity management, space and cooling availability, power circuit supply and redundancy analysis.