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The Twighlight of Small In-House Data Centers
dcblogs writes "Virtualization, cloud services and software-as-a-service (SaaS) is making it much easier to shift IT infrastructure operations to service providers, and that is exactly what many users are doing. Of the new data center space being built in the U.S., service providers accounted for about 13% of it last year, but by 2017 they will be responsible for more than 30% of this new space, says IDC. 'We are definitely seeing a trend away from in-house data centers toward external data centers, external provisioning,' said Gartner analyst Jon Hardcastle. Among those planning for a transition is the University of Kentucky's CIO, who wants to reduce his data center footprint by half to two thirds. He expects in three to five years service provider pricing models 'will be very attractive to us and allow us to take most of our computing off of our data center.' IT managers says a big reason for the shift is IT pros don't want to work in data centers at small-to-mid size firms that can't offer them a career path. Hank Seader, managing principal of the Uptime Institute, said that it takes a 'certain set of legacy skills, a certain commitment to the less than glorious career fields to make data centers work, and it's hard to find people to do it.'"
People pitched the timesharing computing model for a lot of reasons, lack of control of the hardware and the software rental treadmill being two of the largest. Every time I hear someone gushing over The Cloud and Software As A Service, it's history repeating itself.
Dog is my co-pilot.
In general this is true of any industry. As certain services no longer become differentiating and become commoditized, you're going to get a situation where its best to outsource these activities to the player who can do it for you cheapest.
The biggest mistake that companies make is when these data centers are part of your core business. For a University this is not the case - their core business is research and education. For my company, however, we will continue to run our own geographically redundant datacenters because they power our core business - we're a text message gateway.
That there's a 'twilight' is just the natural progression in any industry - however just figure that the jobs that remain in data center work will be directly involved with the core business. If you're at RackSpace or Amazon, then the data is your core business. If you're like us, then the datacenter is so critical to core business that you're de-facto in a position of power in the company.
Good luck to those mediocre data center managers at centers not involved in core-business. I'd start looking for a new job now.
I have a threefold problem with "cloud" storage/computing 1) Lack of control/physical security, up to and including removing my access to my own data due to a violation of some cockamamie TOS or similar agreement. 2) No ability to remedy downtimes, while rare, still do happen. 3) The ability of government agencies to scan my data for whatever they feel like arbitrarily and possibly without due process.
I hate sigs.
What level of risk you're willing to bet on your Internet connection(s).
It will be less than optimal when 20,000 kids in the school are streaming netflix in their dorm rooms while
their professors are trying to work on their research grants on the file servers in the clouds.
Combine that with multiple legal implications of the data being contained on the low bidder data center most of these kind of people will pick
From the article:
>>IT managers says a big reason for the shift is IT pros don't want to work in data centers at small-to-mid size firms that can't offer them a career path. Hank >>Seader, managing principal of the Uptime Institute, said that it takes a 'certain set of legacy skills, a certain commitment to the less than glorious career fields >>to make data centers work, and it's hard to find people to do it.'"
Which to me means "The real reason we can't find anyone to work in our data centers or provide any career path is that we're unwilling to pay anything above minimum wage."
"much CHEAPER to shift IT infrastructure operations to service providers"
It's not about easier. It's trading control, stability, and uptime for Lower IT operation costs. Executives dont care about safety of data, stability, uptime or control. All they care about is how good does the next quarter look to the board. Who cares if the company tanks in 5 years, Next quarter is all that is important.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Virtualization, cloud services and SAS won't replace conventional services until our 'broadband' is faster and more reliable than that offered to the consumer at the moment ...
AccountKiller
Because Twilight is too mainstream.
"IT managers says a big reason for the shift is IT pros don't want to work in data centers at small-to-mid size firms" that is complete and utter bull!
Now if they wanted to pay a reasonable rate then yes, maybe they'd get people to work for them. But until such time those small to medium shops stop being so cheap about what they pay their I.T. people they need to STFU right now.
If it were the Linuxy types that love command line it would have been twlt and a man page describing what it was would be perpetually forthcoming.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
What your missing is that almost everything in IT has been history repeating itself for 20 years or so now. Just about everything cool, sexy, and new has been stuff the mainframe guys did long ago. Timesharing is just the latest. That's not a good thing nor a bad thing, it's just a predictable thing.
Really, the only new ideas have been AJAX (without which the web looks very much like mainframe-terminal interaction) and streaming (which changes how you want to cache stuff in an interesting way).
The industry will circulate between "centralize everything" and "decentralize everything" on a 20-year-ish cycle forever - it's just long enough for CIOs to seem clever as most have forgotten the last time we did it. In another 10 years I expect to see /. posts about "Every time I hear someone gushing over , it's history repeating itself."
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
That's hilarious, but 100% true, the main allure of the cloud right now is infrastructure automation... but what's that done through?
Cloud OS / software.
Just wait until the suits find out they cannot throttle the IT guy in order to get something done, then find out that to their holy cloud provider, they are just another customer.
It's the same thing with insourcing versus outsourcing, which is the twin brother of the cloud. Just try putting heat on the outsource folks to shorten their deadline. They might have alot of customers, and putting you first puts others later, and you aren't worth the trouble. You can save money outsourcing, except when you can't.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.