Leading publication to work with Steve O’Donnell, Green IT guru and SVP IT Infrastructure & Operations at First Data International, the world’s largest provider of merchant processing services, and formerly head of BT’s global data centre business.
Data Centre Solutions (DCS), the only pan-European magazine focusing on the seven critical areas of data centre management – applications, storage, security, facilities, outsourcing/hosting, servers and networks/telecoms – has announced a strategic partnership with industry expert, Steve O’Donnell. Formerly the head of BT’s global data centre business, Steve now works as the Senior Vice President for IT Infrastructure & Operations at First Data International, the world’s largest provider of merchant processing services.
Steve is a committed blogger on The Hot Aisle, one of the most respected professionals within the data centre industry, and winner of three awards for green IT project of the year for BT’s 21st Century Data Centre initiative. He brings to DCS a wealth of knowledge that will be of great benefit to the magazine’s readership – as demonstrated by his in-depth Q and A article in the May issue. In this, Steve shares his views on a range of data centre hot topics:
Virtualization
“If one automates a mess one improves the time to meltdown, if one virtualises a mess there is only limited advantage. Automation and virtualisation can only be successful in organisations that apply the power of one. What do I mean by the power of one? Ruthless focus on standardisation, total attention to detail to get all systems patched to the same levels, to use the same versions of software and directory structures. Exposure of the relative costs and reliability and cycle time improvements of standardization to our business colleagues helps us to engage them in the process.”
Data centre design
“There is a huge amount of genuine ignorance about how data centers operate, what makes them efficient and best practice. I rarely see a site that is even close to being optimal. Most are worse than random because of commonly held beliefs that are just plain wrong.”
Energy efficiency and Green IT
“When buying a piece of equipment, look at how much electricity it uses, and if it has any low power modes that it can go into when lightly loaded. Look at the impact on power streams – does the equipment need AC or can it work with DC? Does it have very tight environmental constraints so it needs a costly air-conditioned data centre or could we consider using fresh air to cool it for part of the year?”
Over the coming months, Steve will be sharing his thoughts on a range of critical data centre business and technology issues with the DCS readership, both in the paper-based magazine and via his blog, which will be available on the DCS website (www.datacentresols.com), and promoted in the DCS weekly email newsletter.
Such independent and authoritative thought pieces will provide valuable guidance to Europe’s hard-pressed data centre managers, as they struggle to juggle the demands of budget, power and personnel constraints – trying to deliver their organizations more compute power, at less cost, and with less people.
Since its launch three years ago, DCS has established itself as Europe’s leading information source for data centre professionals – publishing a mixture of incisive business-focused and more heavyweight technical articles, ensuring that the readership understands how the fast-moving data centre market is developing – whether they be data centre ‘end users’, or those involved in the hosting and colocation space. No other European media source manages to cover the breadth of technologies and subject matters in such a comprehensive fashion as DCS.
The addition of Steve O’Donnell’s expertise to DCS ensures that the magazine, website and email newsletter will continue to fulfil this vital function, as an important part of the Angel Business Communications publication and exhibition portfolio.
