Monthly Archives: December 2009

The Linux Ship Has Sailed

Posted on by gregl

If you believed the IT pundits 10 years ago, Bill Gates was quaking in his boots as Microsoft confronted Linux, the innovative operating system that was destined to conquer the desktop.

“It never happened,” writes Jason Hiner, editor in chief of TechRepublic, in a recent blog post. “In the decade since it was first proclaimed as the ‘Windows killer,’ Linux on the desktop has made virtually no progress in real adoption numbers.” He says Linux’s market share has hovered between one and two percent of total PC operating system installations for 10 years now.

Reasons include some operational difficulties; growing favoritism of Mac OS X as a Windows alternative; a splintered marketing attack by key Linux players including Red Hat, SUSE, Ubtuntu and Debian; lack of technical innovation within Linux; and the lack of a corporate entity providing a Linux presence, with the result that local IT leaders have suffered the blame when difficulties have occurred.

Hiner says the new kid on the block –  Google’s Chrome OS – may remedy some of the Linux problems, but is still several years ahead of its time and unlikely to impact the PC market in 2010. “It’s time to stop all of the misguided predictions about Linux becoming a force on the desktop. That ship has sailed,” Hiner writes. “The masses don’t want it. Businesses don’t want it. Even Google can’t change that.”

Click here to read Hiner’s entire post.

Top 10 Data Center Outages of 2009

Posted on by Karen Karger

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It’s time to knock wood. EasyStreet didn’t have an outage in 2009. And with all of our redundancies in place, we’re not likely to have one. (But I write this with 14 days left in the year — hence the “knock wood.”) This Data Center Knowledge roundup of major data center outages makes it clear it can happen to any organization — and for a variety of reasons. Even Michael Jackson “broke” the Interwebs. Enjoy!

Rack stats show power surge

Posted on by gregl

There’s a lot of talk these days about increased power consumption at data centers across the country. A simple roadmap compiled by Emerson Electric on server racks over the past 12 years brings it all home.

A fully populated server rack in 1996 could house 14 single-corded servers operating at 120 volts, for power consumption of about 4 kW. In 2001, a fully populated rack had 42 servers, most likely dual-corded at 208 volts. So, in those five years, the number of required receptacles jumped from 14 to 84, and consumption went from 4 kW to about 20 kW.

Now blade servers are making their presence felt and are increasing a standard rack’s capacity to six dual-corded blade chasses, operating at 208 volts, single phase, with power consumption of 24 kW – for a six-fold increase in a dozen years.

This is why data centers require flexible power infrastructures that can effectively adjust to changes in the number of devices, their density and where they’re located. Of course that’s on top of the fundamental issues of power availability and its management within the data center.

I Think, Therefore I Surf

Posted on by gregl

Intel scientists have taken a page straight from science fiction with their announcement last week that in a mere 10 years, we’ll be operating our computers via our brainwaves.

No more keyboard, no more mouse. Your brainwaves will be harnessed with Intel-developed sensors implanted in your brain. People will be receptive, the scientists believe, because they’ll no longer be dependent on the computer interface and having to manipulate that interface with their fingers.

“Instead, they’ll simply manipulate their various devices with their brains,” Intel research scientist Dean Pomerleau told Computerworld. “We’re trying to prove you can do interesting things with brain waves . . . Imagine being able to surf the Web with the power of your thoughts.” The technology also would be used with television sets and cell phones.

To make the concept real, Pomerleau and his fellow researchers from Intel, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh are currently decoding human brain activity. He said they’re close to building brain-sensing technology into a head set that could be used to manipulate a computer. The next step is to develop a tiny, less cumbersome sensor suitable for being implanted inside the human brain.

Click here for the Computerworld article.

EasyStreet Among Oregon’s Most Admired Companies

Posted on by Karen Karger

A tableful of EasyStreet staffers just returned from a Portland Business Journal luncheon recognizing the state’s Most Admired Companies for 2009. EasyStreet was fortunate to be eighth on the list of ten technology companies so honored. We’d like to congratulate our customers who also received this distinction:

  • AKT LLP (Steve Tatone was the top CEO in the Professional Services group.)
  • Albina Community Bank
  • The Collins Companies
  • Ferguson Wellman Capital Management
  • Intel Corp. (Named top Technology company.)
  • Leatherman Tool Group Inc.,
  • Mercy Corps (Named top Nonprofit organization.)
  • Miller Nash LLP
  • Oregon Health & Science University (Named top Health Care organization.)
  • PacTrust
  • Reser’s Fine Foods Inc. (Al Reser was the top CEO in the Agriculture and Forest Products group.)

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You can click here to read more about this prestigious award and the other fine Oregon companies that achieved it this year.

Oregon Health Network (OHN) Celebrates Network Operations Center at EasyStreet

Posted on by Karen Karger

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Imagine an OHN-member hospital in Wallowa having a video consultation with a doctor at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland. Suddenly there is a network problem and the connection is lost. A Network Management System alerts the technicians at the OHN Network Operations Center (NOC), located at EasyStreet Online Services, and they work with the service providers on both ends of the connection to get the problem resolved as quickly as possible.

The state’s first broadband telehealth network has become a reality and this accomplishment was celebrated at EasyStreet on Friday, December 4. Nearly 75 stakeholders were in attendance and, as the saying goes, “a good time was had by all.”

OHN is a non-profit organization comprising healthcare, technology and telecommunications experts gathered together to create the first broadband telehealth network in Oregon. A membership-based organization, OHN strives to connect and serve all organizations and partner communities (providers, educators, government and business) who are critical to improving the quality, delivery and access of healthcare education for all Oregonians, regardless of location.

You can read more about the technology behind the telehealth network here.

Or read the full  press release here.

…And a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Posted on by Karen Karger

LeathermanJust in time for the geeks on your gift list, ITworld profiles the top ten mostly non-tech tools IT professionals can’t function without. First on the list is a multi-tool from Leatherman — one of EasyStreet’s happy customers.

“I rewired my parents’ new house for phone and Ethernet with nothing but my Leatherman and a crimping tool,” says a multi-tool advocate.

You can view the whole ITworld list here.

Does Higher Density Mean Greater Inefficiencies?

Posted on by gregl

Faced with ever-shrinking room in the data center, some storage vendors are cramming as many disks as possible into a single space to gain capacity without expanding the storage footprint. Not a good idea, according to Nexsan Corporation, itself a provider of energy-efficient storage systems, headquartered in Thousand Oaks, California.

“Without proper efficiencies and architecture, high-density storage systems can create more problems than they solve and ultimately devastate your business,” Nexsan warned in a recent white paper entitled “The Power/Density Paradox.”

The main culprits are poorly constructed storage subsystems, as well as the “paradox” itself: Inefficiencies in power distribution and additional cooling requirements that end up consuming the floor space the condensed storage was supposed to free up. “Many data centers end up trading space for power resulting in more empty space without any real value achieved – thus, the paradox,” Nexsan states.

“Buildings with infrastructures designed 10 years ago are now reaching their limits on what they can support as data continues to increase at exponential rates,” the authors contend. “In a weak economy, data centers are increasingly motivated to extend the useful life of everything from technology to facilities. As such, vendors have responded with ever increasing amounts of capacity packed into a given amount of space.”

How Does Your IT Budget Look for 2010?

Posted on by Karen Karger

The Society for Information Management recently polled CIOs about their IT spending priorities and plans for dollar allocation in the coming year. An overview of the results is presented in this slide show on CIO Insight. It’s hard to visualize from the slides so I created these two pie charts to represent their findings about 2009 versus 2010 budgets. It looks like the news is better in the coming year— roughly half of the CIOs surveyed said their 2010 budgets would remain the same.

In 2009, 50% of CIO said their budgets would be lower than in 2008.

50% of CIOs said their budgets would be lower in 2009.

 

45% of CIOs said their budgets would be the same in 2010.

45% of CIOs said their budgets would be the same in 2010.