Arthur Cole: The Beginning of the End of IT as We Know It

Continuing with our look at year-end reviews and predictions, I’m struck by the way many of these reports focus on individual technologies but not on the data center in general.

If your focus is on, say, the future of servers or virtualization in 2010, there’s no shortage of opinion out there. But as an infrastructure guy, I’m more interested in how everything stands to come together — not just in the next year but over the next decade.

To get that insight, we sometimes have to dig a little deeper into what people are saying. Take cable giant Media General, for instance. Mike Miller, director of information security, tells IDG that the company is pursuing a broad virtualization and consolidation strategy in 2010, mostly to make up for lost ground during budget-challenged 2009. To lay the groundwork, the company has been stocking up on quad- and six-core, dual-socket machines — the kind with enough horsepower to host upwards of 50 VMs. Similar stories are heard from Qualcomm and Scottrade.

more of the IT Business Edge article from Arthur Cole

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.