Chaos Theory: February 2008 Archives

Some of you with engineering background may be familiar with the Doppler Effect.  A while ago, I read an article from Information Week about an insightful analog of the D.E. with regards to computing demand today versus Moore's Law, as described by Sun's CTO.

Basically, Red-shift Companies/processes/applications are growing so quickly that Moore's Law can't keep pace.  No matter how much faster, bigger, or better the technology is, they will still need more more more.

Blue-shifters are the opposite; their IT needs are more than adequately accommodated with today's technology.  This is a space I see VMware and service consolidation fitting very nicely; our own foray into VMware started with the idea of consolidating lots of underutilized servers, to higher util% on perhaps bigger hardware.

WRDS and Research Computing, on the other hand, is clearly a space that can always benefit from faster/bigger/better technology.  Amazon, Google, Twitter, YouTube, they all have monumental Blue-shifted requirements.

Remember when Huntsman Hall first opened, along with our new DataCenter?  Remember how quickly it filled up with rack upon rack of server upon server?  Clearly, we Red-shifted in terms of space, cooling, power, etc.

With the VMware and other server consolidation projects, with the advent of Blade technologies and consolidated SAN storage, I think we've crossed over to the Blue.

I'd posit that two crucial pieces of our infrastructure has remained squarely in the Red: storage and square-footage.  I don't know how many times in the last 6 months I've said that our limiting factor is Storage.  And, you know what?  We're expanding into a newer, bigger DataCenter in the next six months!

So, here's the question.  Is Wharton (Computing) Red-shifting or Blue-shifting?  Give that article a read and share your own insights into your own processes in the comments!

When a Technet Magazine article starts out by quoting Karl Marx, it makes me sit up straighter and take a little notice.  When the title of the article includes a word I've never heard of before, and I need a quick iNet-search to define, I'm hooked.

It's a good read, but it's strange how sometimes my daily tech-life experience resonates with some tech rags.  Mr. Mahajan mentions a lot of ideas around the "consumerization of IT", but the one thing that just stood out was the "halo" effect.

I never really understood the phrase beyond the obvious: an event, a product, or a service becomes so culturally important, that whole other industries are affected.  He uses the example of the iPod and posits that, because it's the de-facto portable media player in the market, Apple Inc. has enjoyed a tremendous upswing in its proprietary desktop and laptop computer sales.

That's rings true to me about Apple, but how's this for a personal halo effect?

My partner sends me an e-mail, which is basically an announcement from his non-profit's IT staff explaining that they will be doing system maintenance on their Terminal Servers starting at 10:30am.  He forwards it to me laden with some well-chosen, but fictional expletives (thank you Battlestar Galactica).

I wrote back quickly and told him to be careful, that they might be monitoring his e-mail.  You don't want to piss off the IT department after all.  He writes back immediately and says:

I set higher standards for IT/user convenience since you guys almost always do such maintenance at very low traffic times.

See the halo effect?  He has to, literally, live with Wharton's IT maintenance windows, and he knows that we are a "world-class" IT shop, so he is expecting the same from his!

What crossovers of your work-life are finding their way into your daily personal life?  Maybe the more important question is, what was traditionally in your personal/daily life is now part of your workday?  Drop a comment; I'm all ears!

[Joe's Note: The halo-effect nod in the original article was just that, a nod in the idea's general direction.  It talks about a larger range of supporting ideas for the IT consumerization concept, how the changes that are happening in technology today (and arguably for the foreseeable future), will affect not only the business world, but also our daily, personal lives.  A good quick read.]