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 A Record 800 Attendees Converge On Data Center World

A history-making 800 IT professionals attended Data Center World this week in Las Vegas and walked away wiser about a number of issues—cybercrime, security, cloud computing, collocation, power and cooling, change management, data center redesign, mobile devices and their role in data centers, plus much much more.

Imation's Subodh Kulkarni kicked off the event with a powerful keynote warning that a technology tidal wave is bearing down on us. He cited the increasing use of mobile devices in and out of the data center as a crucial reason for developing clear plans for preventing security breaches. Some 222 million individuals in 2009—30% of which were in the healthcare industry—were impacted by these breaches.

"Businesses spend massive time, effort and expense securing data that flows through their computer networks. But the global explosion in the use of mobile computing devices has given data a multitude of additional ways to become portable and vulnerable. Organizations must address the security of mobile and removable media," said Kulkarni.

Yahoo's Scott Noteboom delivered one of the most popular sessions in front of a standing-room-only audience about how he now looks at data centers as "data factories' rather than specialized "castles." Noteboom, who designs and operates one of the world's largest internet-based companies in Yahoo!, has applied historical lessons to its recently completed Lockport, NY data center. It relies on outside air, eliminating the need for expensive chilling systems. Some people may view old factory buildings as eyesores, but Noteboom considers them as the legacy of colleagues working through the problem of maximizing cooling without refrigeration.

As an illustration, he showed a photo of an aluminum smelting plant, with two rows of buildings and a chimney and furnace between them. The designers "had to manage temperature in that building without using any cooling," said Noteboom, "and they were using a dense heat source in the middle creating a chimney effect" to eliminate the heat. "That velocity of air would pull in outside air from the sides to allow the building to breathe," he told attendees at Data Center World. "You can learn a lot of lessons from those past factories."

Noteboom said he is saving his company hundreds of millions of dollars with his data center approach. But building an efficient data center is just a step, he believes, toward merging with cloud computing.

The four-day conference concluded with a panel consisting of members of the Data Center Institute, authors of the recently released report "Guiding Data Centers Through Cloud Computing." Based on AFCOM's 2009/2010 Data Center Trends Survey, only 14.9% of all large-scale data centers worldwide had implemented any form of Cloud Computing as of September 2009. However, it is the collective opinion of the Data Center Institute, that the next five years will see the adoption of Cloud Computing grow dramatically, and that its impact on data center management will be felt throughout the industry.

Judging by the questions and comments from attendees, Cloud Computing may be the current buzzword, but there's still a lot to be learned and understood.

There will be plenty more guidance and information on clouds and other issues affecting data center managers at the next Data Center World to be held March 27-31 at the Mirage Hotel and Convention Center.

Here are just a few ways current Data Center World sessions helped attendees:

"I greatly appreciated the wisdom that the speaker shared with the audience in regard to building data centers. My upcoming project is already off to a smoother start," said Andrew Flint of Plex Systems, Inc. about "The Top 10 Most Misunderstood Design/Build Practices."

"Data Center Management 101" also proved to be extremely valuable: Scott Cline of Sonoma County said, "It is refreshing to see a large-scale company with a Tier 1 data center, 'making it work.'"

Peer MaryBeth Dunlap agreed: "As an English major whose life circumstances led to a job as an operations and data center manager, this was the most valuable session of the day."

Finally, Vincent Daniels of CTC Holdings said that "How to Delay or Avoid Data Center Build Outs" will "really help my data center team increase current PUE."

Look for more details on the next Data Center World right here on www.datacenterworld.com.