Practical insights on IT infrastructure, sourcing, cloud, and emerging technology.
Microsoft Starts to Share I always have thought of Microsoft as Open Source in many ways. I know it may sound odd on several fronts, especially for a guy like me who has been using UNIX flavored operating systems since the early 1980s. But I’ve also been using PC-Windows and Apple Macintoshes since the early… Read More »Microsoft Starts to Share
May 14, 2010
Format War Everyone loves a format war. These things happen once every five years or ten years. The last one that happened was about ten years ago during the Real Media vs. Windows Media wars for domination of Internet video streaming. Many of us are old enough to remember the battle between Sony’s Betmax and… Read More »Everyone Loves A Format War
April 29, 2010
Google as CDN Craig Labovitz, at Arbor Networks, a company that makes packet inspection gear, released a great article about how much traffic Google serves. It has a few key points that the content delivery, content, and telco companies should note: Google is deploying cache servers in ISPs Google generates upwards of 5% of all… Read More »Google as CDN – No Big Deal, But a Big Deal
March 22, 2010
Force Majeure (less secularly known as “Act of God”) clauses are standard contract language and should be included in your data center checklist. Having your data center wiped out by a meteor strike means you’re not getting service credits and there’s not much you can do about it (there are concessions that can soothe that pain,… Read More »Data Center Checklist – Force Majeure Abuse
March 20, 2010
SLA Measurement – Today’s devious device is a playbook page that’s intentionally left blank. Omitting meaningful measurement from IT service Level Agreements (SLAs) or leaving them to the discretion of the supplier can effectively nullify their effect along with service credits of 2%-5% of your monthly bill for a single violation up to 50% or… Read More »Devious Device – SLA Measurement
March 9, 2010
IT Services Suppliers Reviews Like many, I look for reviews of products and services on the internet in order to help my buying decisions. And like many, I often find that there seem to be crazy rantings of people that populate otherwise stellar reviews for products and services of all types. Where do these rantings… Read More »IT Services Suppliers Reviews – Can You Believe It?
February 26, 2010
IT Outsourcing Risk In fairness to sellers of IT services, large buyers are not averse to a few power plays of their own and sometimes steamroll smaller or independent providers with onerous contract clauses. One of the most costly (if rare) provisions in relationships where the balance is tipped to the buyer is consequential damages… Read More »IT Outsourcing Risk – Consequential Damages
February 25, 2010
Managed Services Supplier Playbook: Why IT Buyers Should Worry at Budget Time One of the newer trends that came about as the dollar has weakened in the last few years is the prevalence of currency adjustment clauses in contracts with a remote / offshore component. These are typically buried in some appendix along with CPI… Read More »Managed Services supplier Playbook – Currency Risk
February 19, 2010
Green Grid Virtualization Whitepaper In the recent Green Grid White Paper, “Impact of Virtualization on Data Center Physical Infrastructure“, there’s an interesting discussion about the impact of virtualization on data center density, capacity, and power waste. However, most of the findings apply to in-house environments where the same entity that virtualizes has to deal with… Read More »Perspectives on Green Grid Virtualization Whitepaper
February 10, 2010