I have been getting continued feedback on the Chiller Side Chat that we did live on Monday, September 14th. I wanted to take a quick moment and discuss one of the recurring themes of emails I have been receiving on the topic of data center site selection and the decisions that result at the intersection of data center technology, process and cost. One of the key things that we technical people often forget is that the data center is first and foremost a business decision. The business (whatever kind of business it is) has a requirement to improve efficiency through automation, store information, or whatever it is that represents the core function of that business. The data center is at the heart of those technology decisions and the ultimate place where those solutions will reside.
As the primary technical folks in an organization whether you represent IT or Facilities, we can find ourselves in the position of getting deeply involved with the technical aspects of the facility – the design, the construction or retro-fit, the amount of power or cooling required, the amount of redundancy we need and the like. Those in upper management however view this substantially in a different way. Its all about business. As I have gotten a slew of these mails recently I decided to try and post my own response. As I thought about how I would go about this, I would keep going back to Chris Crosby’s discussion at Data Center Dynamics about two years ago. As you know I was at Microsoft, at the time and felt that he did an excellent job of outlining the way the business person views data center decisions. So I went digging around and found this video of Chris talking about it. Hopefully this helps! If not let me know and I am happy to discuss further or more specifically.
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LooseBolts 