Monday, July 30, 2012

OMG, I saw a Data Center


Last week one of the global IT biggies invited a bunch of CIOs to their R&D Centre with the defined agenda being a discussion on future trends and movements in their technologies; the idea was to get some early traction with old and potential customers and field testing that helps fine tune a product. Apart from all this were the good old peer networking and some high spirits if you know what I mean. So I was enticed enough to join the group to give away a weekend in the name of learning and networking.

Like all such gatherings it was a good start with key leaders and guys oozing tech from their ears talking about new disruptive technologies are coming our way in the next 2-4 years. They held sway in the graveyard sessions post lunch with sleep overpowering only the infirm or the bored indifferent which did not matter. Most cynical CIOs on the wrong side of forty acknowledged the prowess and the future opportunity.  Good things don’t last and this one too didn’t.

After the first two sessions started the mundane, the irrelevant and the hard sell; data centre density, cooling, and power consumption. Virtualization and private cloud are good, a higher virtualization ratio even better, but 20K VMs in a rack ? Why do I need 20K virtual servers ? The nail in the wall was when someone decided it’s a good idea to teach CIOs how to configure a VM and then move it across racks with no downtime. I am not sure if CIOs want to be doing that or enterprises want high cost CIOs to do that !

I mean does a CIO teach the technology architect the finer nuances of VM management ? To rub salt into the wounds, they extended the session over the coffee break to cover private cloud extension to the public cloud. Now I am sure that my server admin would be kicked by this demo, none of the CIOs in the room were. They expressed their displeasure in no uncertain terms, some decided to leave the premises as soon as the break was declared closed. I asked the presenter if their CIO knew how to ! Patience too has its limits…

The climax was waiting for the following day; a visit to the R&D facility ! We all got into a bus, arrived at the big building, signed in with sobriety and were taken to the show. We entered a room with biometric authentication to be faced with rows and rows of racks with cables dangling from some. Proudly the scientist pointed to one of the racks and started talking about why it was different and the innovation that went into making the hardware inside and why we should immediately order it.

I could not remember the last time I had visited a data centre (even my own); digging deep into memory it dawned that it was more than a decade back. I whispered to the CIO next to me and he too reminisced a long time back. A few others had been to their outsourced or co-located data centres when they had signed the deal. I wished my infrastructure head was present; maybe he would have appreciated the significance. To us the CIOs it was a lost experience, we did not share the enthusiasm.

Does or should the data centre matter to the CIO ? The vehement answer would be yes from many. Then what about the cloud ? Have you visited the Google or Amazon or Salesforce.com data centre ? Do you know when you buy SaaS where it is delivered from ? I believe that we need to come out of this obsession; the vendors need to start defocusing the data centre and start engaging on business outcomes. Yes the data centre makes the IT run, but to pick a line from Nicholas Carr, the data centre does not matter anymore !

10 comments:

  1. I completely agree with Arun sir. Business outcome is more important for a CIO while technology deployments and tech related nitty-gritty's should be looked after by IT Infrastucture or Technology heads.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would think that the CIO could leave the nuts and bolts details to his Infrastructure Lead. However, it would be wise to stay in the loop- after all the buck stops with the CIO!
    Anand

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anand,

      In the loop, fully agree and endorse; how to configure a VM, that is a big stretch. The caveat here is that the CIO is not Head of Infrastructure or loves technology more than other stuff that a CIO should be focusing on.

      -A

      Delete
  3. Good one. Missing the trees for the woods.

    ReplyDelete
  4. At the outset, it should have been clear as to the agenda of specific meet that would have given the "CIO's" an opportunity to decline the invite or at least take an informed decision.

    I presume the situation you encountered is for the fact that CIO" is a misnomer today with designation being flouted by many. Unfortunately as in Govt./PSU's, designations in pvt. sector are not linked with qualification/experience and hence lead to such issues.

    I agree for an accomplished CIO, it is important to be aware of technologies, however s/he needn't be conversant with the configuration techniques, better left to technologists.

    It follows though that a "CIO" should not fall in a trap laid by vendors to create a need for new offerings. A CIO should evaluate and recommend new solutions only if they actually bring significant value to business.

    ReplyDelete
  5. >>Should CIOs learn how to configure a VM?
    In many meetings with CIOs in which I evangelize the cloud, as soon as I show how quickly one can spin up a new instance in the cloud, configure and clone it, they get the potential of the cloud offerings. Hence demos always help. that said, I agree 100% with you that the changing role of a CIO as he/she becomes more business-aware and as IT is abstracted from him/her, he/she is a gatekeeper of range of IT services that keeps vendors on their toes. My 2 cents.

    Jinesh Varia

    ReplyDelete
  6. >>Should CIOs learn how to configure a VM?
    In many meetings with CIOs in which I evangelize the cloud, as soon as I show how quickly one can spin up a new instance in the cloud, configure and clone it, they get the potential of the cloud offerings. Hence demos always help. that said, I agree 100% with you that the changing role of a CIO as he/she becomes more business-aware and as IT is abstracted from him/her, he/she is a gatekeeper of range of IT services that keeps vendors on their toes. My 2 cents.

    Jinesh Varia

    ReplyDelete
  7. >> Should CIOs learn how to configure a VM?
    in many meetings with CIOs in which I evangelize the cloud, as soon as I show a quick demo of how one can quickly spin up an instance in the cloud, configure and then clone - all within minutes, they get the potential of the offering. This is far more impactful than any amount of "slideware" . That said, I agree 100% with you that the changing role of CIOs, as they become more more business-aware and distant from abstracted IT, is forcing them to be a gatekeeper of a range of IT services (not infrastructure). Hence, they will never have the need to visit a data center of a vendor, but still have all the "buttons" to to move services around and keep vendors on their toes because now they are not locked-in with a particular hardware vendor for years.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I found this funny and agree that your view point is right to the T. The CIO's time is too precious to waste on such mundane activities. I do not think we need to showcase a VM movement(effortlessly) to a CIO to prove a point. He will be more interested to understand the business benefits and how he can utilize them in his environment to help business improve.
    I follow your blog occasionally to understand the CIO thought.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This is the transformation that we are seeing since the data centre technology has matured and they are now more reliable. A decade back a significant effort and capital was spent in data centre which is no longer the case hence this transition should also happen at CIO level. There might be some old school CIO who have spent half of their career building and mantaining data centre and they need to change that.

    ReplyDelete