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DCD F: What can the data center industry do to increase its influence over government policy?
I have worked closely with government agencies for a number of years assisting in solving their data issues, as well as more recently serving as a commissioner on the TechAmerica Cloud2 Commission that is mandated by the Obama Administration to examine the role of the cloud in the government and private sectors.

In my experience, the key to influencing government policy is proving the success of a technology and its benefits.

Additionally, the private sector must influence government adoption of new technologies through active discussion, engagement and participation on commissions and other boards.

As part of the Cloud2 Commission, we are focusing on transnational data flows, global harmonization, infrastructure investment and data center transformation. It is the practical experience of seasoned professionals that will shape the commission’s final report and ultimately influence how cloud technologies will be deployed in the government sector.

The greatest achievement of the data center industry in the last three years has been...
The greatest achievement of the data center industry in the last three years has been the adoption of virtualization and cloud computing.

Although the adoption of server and ultimately storage virtualization has created new challenges, it has provided the data center with the ability to handle explosive data growth.

With analysts predicting that structured data will grow by 20% each year, companies and data centers must be prepared to adequately store this information and protect it in the event of disaster.

What is the current key customer concern?
Right now, disaster recovery and protection of company data is at the top of each IT administrator’s concerns, due to all the natural disasters which have occurred in the past six months.

These are legitimate concerns and must not be taken lightly. Not only must data centers have multiple points of failovers for electrical and hardware issues, but the actual data and applications within these facilities must be effectively protected in the event of a tornado or flood.

For years, the common method was to replicate this data to tape and take it to another location far away, or in more recent years, send a copy of the data through a network connection to another location. But the replication of the information is not enough. In today’s IT environment, data centers cannot ever go down; data and applications must be available 24x7 to handle customer and employee demands.

Data replication is not disaster recovery. Data centers need to implement an automated disaster recovery solution, one that will kick in immediately and bring the entire IT infrastructure - virtual servers, applications and data - back in the order needed and within a short period of time to ensure nothing is lost and the data center continues to operate efficiently.

What should it be?
The ongoing concern of IT administrators within the data center should be and continues to be virtualization. Virtualization allows for the consolidation of the data center footprint, saving energy and floor space, as well providing efficiency and simplicity of the infrastructure. As companies move from server virtualization to storage virtualization, they are creating the means and opportunities to build private internal cloud structures.

The most important job I’ve done today is...
There isn’t one thing I could put my finger on. It is actually a compilation of everything I have done.

I have had the opportunity and pleasure to meet with some of the largest companies in the world, learn their business issues and come up with solutions that solve their complex business problems with data sets up to the zettabyte range, especially within the government sector.

Working with them at the CIO level, discovering the really eye-opening problems they are facing and helping them solve those problems and save money continues to be my focus and most important task.

What I learned at the last major industry event I attended was...
I learned most organizations are still focused on solving the exact same problems they had 10 years ago:
• Too little budget
• Too much data
• Not enough resources
• Too little time

In my professional career I was most influenced by...
Several individuals have influenced my career direction and focus on the storage side of the data center.

I met Bill Ham, a humble engineer type, at a training session at Digital. He was instrumental with iSCSI development and the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).

Steve Sicola and Richie Lary on the StorageWorks side are driving new products in the industry. They brought me to the storage side and gave me some direction.

The most impressive person I’ve met in the data centre industry is:
I am impressed mostly by the clients I have been working with, especially in the financial, sciences and healthcare sectors.

Which has the biggest role in the future of the datacenter industry: Mechanical or electrical?
Both will always have a huge impact on the data center. Without proper cooling and fire protection, a data center cannot meet stringent environmental requirements, and without clean abundant power, systems will crash.

Financial Management or IT?
IT - it is technology that will ultimately support and protect a company’s most value asset – its data.

Virtual or physical?
Virtualization allows for IT consolidation that creates simplicity and increases efficiency.

Public or private?
Private companies have more control over their data and infrastructure, allowing for consolidation and efficiency and ultimate creation of private cloud structures through the virtualization and consolidation of their server and storage infrastructures.