Since my teens I’ve frequented numerous technology shows including the NCC, Comdex, Windows World, Intertop and many others, though I’ve become somewhat picky over time. I don’t always continue to attend if I can’t extract enough benefit from the content. But one show I just attended—Data Center World 2010 which was held in Nashville — is definitely one I plan to revisit in the future. If you’re not a member of AFCOM, you may not have heard of Data Center World, so I thought I’d share a bit of the buzz and let you know what was on people’s minds.
While there were some great products and services offered in the Expo Hall, I was most impressed with the presentations and materials shared at the show (which included presentations from many of the vendors in a non-sales format). Some of the hot topics included:
- Power Issues – These popped up in nearly every session.
- New Government mandates such as U.S. Federal Executive Order 14423 – Government Agencies must reduce power consumption by 3% a year or 30% by 2015.
- Many solutions were on display to help you manage or lower you power consumption.
- Temperatures are rising in the Datacenter to cut power usage – Microsoft will not buy datacenter equipment that will not operate at 95 degrees.
- PoE Plus is coming which will allow even more power hungry devices into the datacenter
- Discussions took place regarding cabling benefits to accommodate higher heat.
- Cloud Computing – Concerns over security and unintended consequences seemed to crop up in each discussion regarding these services.
- A potential issue raised was “What if another user in the public cloud committed a crime and the entire system was taken off-line for chain of custody requirements linked to a criminal investigation?”
- Multiple mentions of Gartner reports on ASP adoption in the 1990s were compared to the estimated adoption rates of public cloud services today.
- Private cloud infrastructure performance and support requirements were discussed at length in future proofing sessions.
- Cyber Terrorism – Certainly hot with many experts and users swapping stories and concerns.
- Estimates were made that between 90-270k Chinese were being trained to steal secrets and maliciously attack systems by the Red Army. Of major concern were the tools and instruction now available.
- Cyber attacks in the past were overwhelmingly linked to data theft. However, in the past year, malicious-only attacks accounted for 20% of the total reported.
- Cloud environments were particularly grilled with numerous stories of issues already being reported.
- Various devices and attacks were discussed at length.
- Solutions Gaining Popularity
- Flywheel solution and implementation are definitely gaining traction.
- HVAC and Power in an outside container is definitely making a push, though there is more interest than adoption at this point.
If you attended AFCOM, what caught your attention? What’s your focus in the data center for 2010?
