In her book “Surveillance Capitalism,” Harvard scholar Shoshana Zuboff describes how some software and service providers have been collecting vast amounts of data, with the goal of tracking, anticipating, shaping and even controlling the behavior of…
IT security is a huge management concern that receives a lot of attention and budget. The battle to keep out intruders – and manage unwelcome activity from insiders - is not just virtual. This report discusses the tactics, processes, tools and…
The full report Ten data center industry trends in 2020 is available to Uptime Intelligence subscribers here.
In 2012, Microsoft announced that it planned to eliminate engine generators at its big data center campus in Quincy, Washington. Six years later the same group, with much the same aspirations, filed for permission to install 72 diesel generators,…
We are often asked for our thoughts about the use of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries in data center uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems. This is a relatively new, evolving technology, and there are still a lot of unknowns. In our…
Government regulations, shifting IT environments, key innovations, new market developments and changing demographics are reshaping the IT landscape at a striking pace. What should data center owners, managers, and operators expect in 2020 and beyond…
Separating production and nonproduction assets should be an operational requirement for most organizations. By definition, production assets support high-priority IT loads — servers that are critical to a business or business unit. In most…
One of the most widely cited metrics in the IT industry is for availability, expressed in the form of a number of nines: three nines for 99.9% availability (minutes of downtime per year), extending to six nines — 99.9999% — or even, very rarely,…
Regulation of Internet giants has focused so far mostly on data privacy, where concerns are relatively well understood by lawmakers and the general public. At the same time, the threat of antitrust action is growing. Congressional hearings in the US…
In the movie “Mary Poppins,” Mr. Banks sings that a British bank must be run with precision, and that “Tradition, discipline and rules must be the tools.” Otherwise, he warns, “Disorder! Chaos!” will ensue. One rule, introduced by the UK Financial…
A previous Uptime Intelligence Note suggested that avoiding data center outages might be as simple as trying harder. The Note suggested that management failures are the main reason that enterprises continue to experience downtime incidents, even in…
Why do some industries and organizations suffer more serious, high profile outages than others?In a recent Uptime Intelligence Note, we considered a June 2019 report issued by the US General Accounting Office (GAO) on the IT resiliency of US…
Maintaining and training staff on comprehensive, up-to-date procedures is a proven best way of reducing the likelihood of an outage and is key to restoring operations quickly afterward. This report examines the impact of outages and the relationship…
According to many IT professionals, a very high percentage of data center failures are caused by human error. Some report numbers as high as 75%, but Uptime Institute generally reports about 70%. That assumption immediately raises an important…
In the recently published 2019 Uptime Institute supplier survey, participants told us they are witnessing higher than normal data center spending patterns. This is in line with general market trends, driven by the demand for data and digital…
Andy Lawrence
Intelligence Team
Chris Brown