Data Center World promises to assist experienced industry professionals in both data center and facilities management increase their knowledge and insights about how IT goals and business goals can be aligned to improve operations. The conference will provide attendees with educational sessions facilitated by some of the most respected minds in the data center and facilities management fields, allowing participants to leave with not only a solid action plan, but valuable business contacts.

The conference’s keynote speaker, Vivek Kundra, formerly the United States’ Chief Information Officer and now with Salesforce.com, will discuss the challenges he faced while leading the federal government’s information technology bureaucracy at a time when cutting costs, increasing efficiency and driving innovation was of great importance. His keynote presentation will focus on the use of technology to create lasting change, tapping the creativity of people to keep innovation optimal, and confronting the tough decisions to keep your organization growing and competitive.

Data Center World will also include:

• More than 80 informative presentations
• An engaging keynote presentation
• Powerful networking opportunities and luncheon
• Expo welcome reception
• Data Center Manager of the Year Award ceremony and dinner

The presentations fall into these topical groupings:

• General Data Center Management
• Disaster Recovery/Security
• Cloud Computing
• Data Center Builds/Expansion and Design
• General Facilities Management
• Power and Cooling

Visit the Data Center World calendar page on Data Center Knowledge for more details.

For more events, return to the Data Center Knowledge Events Calendar.

There is growing interest in the Data Center World conference this spring, since the keynote speaker is Vivek Kundra, who formerly served as the U.S. Chief Information Officer. Kundra was recently hired by Salesforce.com to serve as Executive Vice President of Emerging Technologies.

Kundra’s keynote will emphasize leadship in times of change and transformation, and the lessons every organization can learn from when leading a transformation in a change-averse environment.

As the first federal CIO, Kundra faced significant challenges as he oversaw the federal government’s information technology bureaucracy at a time of cutting costs, increasing efficiency and driving innovation. His responsibilities included managing the $80B federal technology budget as well as transforming the way technology was purchased. He brought best-in-class private sector solutions to solve massive public sector inefficiencies.

Kundra is credited with saving over $3 billion in taxpayer dollars, adopting game-changing technologies in the public sector, strengthening the cybersecurity posture of the nation and launching an open government movement through that data.gov platform, which has been replicated across 21 nations, 29 states, 11 cities, and several international organizations.

Also, Kundra will explain:

• His leadership principles and how to use technology to create lasting change.
• How to create a transparent and accountable environment that sheds light on what’s going on within an organization.
• The importance of action-oriented, executable and nimble methodologies.
• People are our biggest asset. How do you source people using the Silicon Valley approach?
• How do you tap into the power and creativity of people to keep innovation optimal and stay on top of the latest technologies?
• How to confront the tough decisions that need to be made to keep your organization growing and competitive.

For further information and registration, visit our Data Center World page on the events calendar.

The one-day event will offer four tracks highlighting converging IT and facilities technologies, energy-efficiency improvement methodologies, data center infrastructure management tools, and large-scale project planning.

Pascal Finette, Director of Mozilla’s Web Forward Program (WebFWD), will present the keynote address, titled “Innovate in the Open!” and breakout sessions will facilitate in-depth peer discussions.

In the Trends & Converging Technologies track, Michael Bangs, Director of Global Facilities at Adobe, and Jeff Suellentrop, Director of Enterprise Architecture at PETCO, will present case studies focusing on inter-operation of enterprise IT and facilities technologies. Representatives from Brocade Communications, HP, UCSF and Cisco Systems will provide an exclusive look at similar technological developments at their respective companies.

The IT, Facilities & Data Center Topics track will allow attendees to share insights on data center design, management, security and virtualization. This track will feature presenters from Sybase, MGI Research, Facebook and Lockheed Martin.

The event will also resume its monitoring track titled “Facilities, Operations & Monitoring Case Studies,” which will highlight current trends in data center infrastructure management and provide strategies for reducing energy consumption. Jerry Green, Solutions Design Manager at Cisco, will deliver a presentation on the latest developments in deploying Power Distribution Unit (PDU) systems (titled A Deeper Insight into the Understanding of Smart PDU). Other participants in the track include Orlando Castro, Program Manager Specialist at Kaiser Permanente; Dean Nelson, Senior Director, Global Foundational Services at eBay; and Chuck Rego, Chief Architect High Density Data Centers at Intel.

A final track titled “Collaboration, Strategy & Planning” will feature panels and end-user case studies on operations, management and strategic planning. Participants include Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, USPS and Silicon Valley Power.

For additional information on the 2012 Technology Convergence Conference visit our Events Calendar.

AFCOM was founded in 1980 to provide networking and education opportunities for data center professionals, and currently has more than 4,500 members and 40 chapters worldwide. The group is known for its twice-yearly Data Center World conferences.

iNET Interactive operates online communities and news sites, including Web Hosting Talk, the primary forum for the hosting industry, as well as the HostingCon conference. Earlier this year iNET acquired The Web Host Industry Review, a leading publication covering the web hosting sector.

AFCOM said the deal will provide the group with access to the resources of a larger organization and improved online expertise to fulfill its mission. AFCOM’s current team will continue as part of iNet Interactive, including Jill Yaoz, president of the AFCOM association and chairperson of Data Center World.

“Becoming a member of the iNET Interactive family is a milestone for AFCOM as it expands the breadth and depth of our services,” said Yaoz. “Both my team and I will remain deeply involved with our current services and conferences, but we also look forward to rolling out enhanced offerings through iNET Interactive’s leadership. I am confident that iNET Interactive will continue to grow and develop AFCOM with the same passion and commitment that has driven this organization for thirty-plus years.”

“AFCOM is a perfect fit to the iNET Interactive family,” said Troy Augustine, iNET Interactive president and CEO. “Our goal is to further enrich AFCOM’s services for its valued members, while strengthening iNet Interactive’s presence in the data center, web hosting and technology markets.”

The Spring Data Center World conference is set for March 18-22, 2012 at The Mirage in Las Vegas. The keynote speaker will be Vivek Kundra, who just completed his duties as the United States’ first chief information officer. For a look back at the fall 2011 show, see Highlights from Data Center World Fall 2011.

Schneider Electric introduced two new modules (one for power and one for cooling) for the EMEA region at this week's DataCenterDynamics CONVERGED conference in London.

The DataCenterDynamics CONVERGED conference was held this week in London, with two days of panels and presentations from Google, eBay, Cisco and many others. See the DCD news section for details of the presentations. There were also product introductions from a number of vendors. Here’s a roundup:

Schneider Introduces New Modules: Global energy management specialist Schneider Electricannounced two new facility module power and cooling solutions for the EMEA region. The new modular units enable data centre power and cooling capacity to be added in 500kW increments, allowing physical infrastructure to be right-sized to the IT load . “Facility modules are a step towards the commoditization of data centre physical infrastructure,” said Tony Day, Director of Data Centre Projects and Professional Services at Schneider Electric said. “Instead of waiting months, customers can expect to deploy additional capacity within weeks. Because Schneider Electric pre-engineer, configure and test facility modules prior to delivery ensuring reliability and efficiency, site installation is also made simpler and speedier, reducing associated costs and the risk of human error.” The Facility Power Modules for EMEA incorporate high efficiency modular UPS, hot-swappable power modules, a segregated battery room, a fully integrated cooling system with free-cooling capability, inert gas fire suppression and aspirating detection system. Modules can be stacked vertically or side by side, and delivered using conventional road transportation methods.

ABB launches new management tool – ABB launched a new management suite for the data center that covers software, hardware and services at DatacenterDynamics CONVERGED. It said the suite uses the access capabilities of ABB’s System 800xA platform as its foundation, which allows it to Decathlon to harmonize a number of IT disciplines to make data centers more reliable, and provide a single view of IT, facilities and energy management across the data center. ABB called Decathlon a Data Center Enterprise Management (DCEM) solution and ABB Control Technologies product manager for data centers Eric Olsen said by using the suite, companies can realize energy savings of between 10 and 50%.

Concurrent Thinking unveils DCIM Product – Concurrent Thinking unveiled its new DCIM products, concurrentCOMMAND and concurrentCONTROL, which offer a solution for optimising the performance of both the physical infrastructure of the data centre and the IT systems operating within it. The Concurrent products provide capabilities for monitoring and managing power at the distribution board, PDU and server level (including power capping); support for environmental sensors; out-of-band server health monitoring; and even OS deployment and performance monitoring. “Our products monitor all aspects of the data centre, offering powerful and intuitive tools for identifying potential energy inefficiencies – whether these relate to high overheads in power and cooling, or stem from poor IT utilisation by server, rack, customer or application,” said Concurrent Thinking CTO, Michael Rudgyard. “Our goal is to offer a 20% saving within the first 12 months for all of our customers, and a complete return on investment in the same period.”

AEG Power Offers New High Efficiency UPS- AEG Power Solutions announced the PROTECT Blue modular UPS family of 3-phase power protection products for data centre and mission critical applications. PROTECT Blue is 95% efficient at only 20% load. The new UPS also provides 99% efficiency when being operated in Eco Mode.”PROTECT Blue has been developed by AEG PS specifically to fulfil the need for high efficiency, high reliability power protection devices for today’s data centre and computer room requirements. PROTECT Blue is a high performance, compact and competitively priced power protection solution,” said Iain Campbell, Business Development Director — UK & Ireland, AEG Power Solutions.The new UPS features 3-level IGBT technology to reduce switching losses, and together with VFI topology and a transformerless design, provides a smaller, lighter and more efficient UPS implementation.

Romonet announces version 2 of Prognose suite.  Predictive modeling software company Romonet announced version 2.0 of its  Prognose software suite.  The company is also announcing three additional components to the suite with Prognose energy, Prognose economics and Prognose enterprise. Prognose 2.0 brings advanced features including the ability to simulate over a full Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) delivering even greater accuracy and climate sensitive analysis of data centers based on their actual or intended geographical location. The new Node Level Resilience (NLR) feature allows users to rapidly model the impact of control system changes reducing the risk of an unexpected behavior impacting data center availability and uptime. “Our clients want to operate data centers that are cost and energy optimized throughout their life cycle,” said Zahl Limbuwala, co-founder and CEO of Romonet. “For us, that means delivering world leading predictive modeling software tools that provide a clear and accurate forecasting of hour-to-hour operational performance, energy usage and total cost of operations for the entire the data center facility.”

The day’s panels and presentations will feature industry executives including Anthony Wanger, the President of IO (the keynote speaker), Telx CEO Eric Shepcaro, Sentinel Data Centers co-president Josh Rabina, FiberMedia CEO Michael Bucheit and NetAccess Corporation CEO Blake Ellman and Jeffrey Markley, CEO of the Markley Group, along with representatives from Grubb & Ellis, Cushman & Wakefield, ABRY Partners, Signal Hill Capital, BlackRock, Atlantic Metro, New York Internet, Digital Realty Trust, Rudin Management, The LeFrak Organization, T5 Data Centers, Jones Lang LaSalle, Highland Associates, and many others.

Sessions will focus on data center market fundamentals in Greater New York, financing of data center projects in the region, challenges of operating data centers in urban markets, end user requirements. In the afternoon there is a tour of Rudin Management’s data center building at 32 Avenue of the Americas. See the full agenda on the conference web site.

KC Mares, of Megawatt Consulting, moderated a panel on high performance data centers that included examples from Facebook and Brocade.

Thought leaders in the data center industry assembled Friday at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif. for the annual Data Center Efficiency Summit sponsored by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group (SVLG).  The event featured data center thought leaders from Facebook, NetApp, Cisco, Oracle, Intel, Akamai, Vantage Data Centers, Fortune Data Centers, Stanford University, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, the Electric Power Research Institute and many more. Sessions focused on end user case studies on data center efficiency projects. For more photos and highlights of the day, visit Scenes from the SVLG Data Center Summit.

Tom Furlong, director of site operations, Facebook, and Jay Park, director of data center design and construction, Facebook, presented about innovations in data center design and the Open Compute Project.

A record 780 data center and facilities managers gathered in Phoenix for a robust conference presented by the 7X24 Exchange this week. Here’s a look at our coverage of some of the hot topics and sessions from the event:

Is Maintenance Making Your Facility Less Reliable? – Is “preventive maintenance” not really that preventive after all? In the data center, where human error is a leading cause of downtime, a vigorous maintenance schedule can actually make a facility less reliable, according to several speakers at this week’s 7×24 Exchange Fall Conference.

7×24: Generators are Key to Reliability – When it comes to reliability, diesel generators are far and away the most important pieces of equipment in a data center, and regulatory mandates on fuel may be creating new problems that could raise generator failure rates. Those were the key points made by Steve Fairfax, President of MTechnology, in a provocative keynote presentation Tuesday.

AOL: 60,000 Servers, Retooling for the Future – AOL has played an important role in Internet history, serving as the initial on-ramp to cyberspace for millions of users. But can AOL re-assert its relevance after years of struggling to keep pace in a fast-changing environment?

Scenes from the 24×7 Fall Conference – Our photo gallery provides an overview of key panels, presentations and networking.

The sun over the fountain and palms at the Squaw Peak Lawn of the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. The resort was the site of the Fall 2011 7X24 Exchange Conference.

Nearly 800 IT and facilities managers who oversee data center operations attended the 7X24 Exchange Fall 2011 Conference held at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. There was a great deal of helpful information and lessons learned shared among participants who were on hand for lively presentations and interesting discussions of reliability in data center operations. Visit the following pages for photos of the action: Scenes from 7X24 Exchange and More Scenes from 7X24 Exchange.

It will offer coverage of issues impacting the data center including:

• Advance to the next phase of virtualization exploitation
• Develop the right cloud computing strategy
• Deal with ITIL and process improvements
• Align I&O tightly to the needs of business
• Manage aging infrastructures and the challenges of modernization more successfully
• Deal effectively with space, power and cooling issues
• Meet compliance regulations
• Leverage master data to manage risk

The latest data center technologies will be demonstrated by more than 100 companies that will be exhibiting at the conference.  Sponsors include Dell, Cisco, Intel, Symantec, and Oracle.

For a full list of sponsors, visit the conference’s exhibitors page.

Keynote speakers include Facebook Director of Hardware Design and Supply Chain Frank Frankovsky, Head of Technology Infrastructure Services at Wells Fargo, Scott Dillion and Gartner Research VP David J. Cappuccio.

Visit The Gartner Data Center Conference Site for full agenda, speaker details and registration.

For Data Center Knowledge readers, register with code DSK and save $300.