Data Center

I won't cover it all here but be sure to click over to our blogging mothership, Direct2Dell, to read about Dell's Fast Track to Efficiency, the theme for Dell's announcement of a slew of new servers, a cool new EqualLogic array for small business and remote offices, and quite a few different services.

We'll also be hosting a webcast today with a number of Dell executives outlining the importance of these announcements and the impact to our customers. Following that webcast, my colleagues at Dell TechCenter will be hosting a live technical chat.

Take a look.

Our friends at Google yesterday introduced its new Google Search Appliance (GSA) 6.0, which we're pleased to tell you is powered by Dell PowerEdge servers from Dell's OEM Industry Solutions Group (Dell OEM). Specifically, the new search appliances leverage Dell's PowerEdge R710 servers, part of Dell's 11th generation of PowerEdge servers that were introduced earlier this year.

Google is selling the search appliance to corporations as a server with enterprise search software to enable companies to index and retrieve data stored on their corporate Web systems. According to Google, the new appliance can index up to 30 million documents, which when connected with other appliances, can now search billions of corporate documents.

As Google's Cyrus Mistry points out in his post ealier today, "It's hard to conceptualize the number 1,000,000,000. One billion sheets of paper could circle the earth at the equator well over five times. Counting to one billion would take about 30 years of your life, even if you never stop to sleep. And if you had to find a single piece of information by sorting through a billion documents it would take you, on average, about 2000 years. Businesses and large organizations have tons of documents and other types of data — some even have a billion documents that need searching, and it's unlikely that employees have 2000 years to dedicate to the hunt." Um, ok, so I'd rather have an appliance looking for that 401k information I needed for my tax return.

Dell's OEM team extensively customized its next generation of PowerEdge servers that power the Google Search Appliance 6.0 for enterprise customers, making it as simple to organize and search information behind the corporate firewall as it is to use Google.com.

Rick Froehlich, vice president and general manager of Dell's OEM team, had this to say about today's announcement: “Businesses that require extensive customization, single-point contact and fulfillment, and high product quality can find the right solution with our Dell OEM team. By combining our industry-leading server platforms with best-in-class design capabilities and supply chain expertise, we helped the Google team immediately deliver a great customer experience.”

Rick's team helped drive specific aspects of the design of the PowerEdge servers to suit the unique needs of appliance solutions like the GSA. Specifically, design and function enhancements, improvements to product stability and lifecycle management support and offering top-tier quality and reliability that appliance OEMs welcome customizing with their brand.

You'll soon start hearing more about Dell's OEM activities here on Inside Enterprise IT and very soon I'll introduce you to Franklin Flint, a senior systems consultant and technology evangelist working on Rick's OEM team.

Take a minute and watch this video that Google created on the new Google Search Appliance. Good stuff.

I spent a few minutes yesterday talking to Theodore Gray, who along with Dr. Stephen Wolfram, founded Wolfram Research in 1988. The company has made quite a few headlines recently with the launch of their newest project, Wolfram Alpha, a computational knowledge engine.

Before I get into Wolfram's latest news, let me tell you a little about Theo. In addition to co-founding Wolfram Research, he is responsible for the graphical user interface of Mathematica, Wolfram Research's other widely successful software program that is used in universities and companies around the world. In 2002, he was awarded an Ig Nobel prize in Chemistry for his Wooden Periodic Table Table. He also has written a column for Popular Science since 2003 about chemistry and blowing things up, and just last month launched a book called Mad Science - Experiments You Can Do at Home -- But Probably Shouldn't, a collection of his columns.

Theo was very clear that while journalists and users are quick to compare Wolfram Alpha to traditional search engines like Google, Ask Jeeves and Microsoft Live Search, and others suggest is more similar to Wikipedia, in reality it is a completely different type of online tool. As Theo tells me in this interview, "It is not a search engine...it is really quite different."

I did a little "research" myself that probably didn't cause the PowerEdge server powering the Wolfram Alpha supercomputer too much strain.

I entered a simple term that represents something many of you may have pondered: what is the weight of a gallon of milk? Having been raised on a dairy farm in Northern Illinois, I always knew that the weight of a gallon of milk was approximately eight-and-a-half pounds. I entered "weight of gallon of milk" into Wolfram Alpha and it generated a data table that showed it weighed nine pounds (must be rounded up), but also unit conversions, serving density and volume.

On Google I found this result, Ask Jeeves gave me this and Microsoft Live Search gave me this -- all search results that were generated when the search engines went out to the World Wide Web, looked for meta-data and keywords that would suggest a page had something to do with the weight of a gallon of milk. So you'll see links to all sorts of websites that propose to answer that question or discuss it in some way.

Wolfram Alpha, on the other hand, actually taps into a number of data pools and produces data that are related to the words entered into the text box. So, the server infrastructure required to power the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine is significant as it is actually crunching numbers, data, to deliver to the user an answer to their query.

Theo is quick to point out that they are learning new information every time someone enters a term and over time the site will get better and better. But the cool thing now is that if you're a Firefox user, they have just added a plug-in that allows you to see Wolfram Alpha results pasted JavaScript-style into the right-hand side of your Google results page. So now it's easy for you to get your Google and Wolfram Alpha information all in one search.

Have a listen.

Earth Day is the time of year when everywhere you turn it’s green. The newspaper, radio, and of course TV: several broadcasting networks are featuring special green-themed logos and programming.

So it shouldn’t have been a surprise to see thousands of “green” consumers at this year’s Go Green Expo in NYC. I had the pleasure of speaking at the conference on Saturday about Dell’s green IT strategy. While I'm usually I’m talking to CIOs and business executives about the importance of being green, this conference provided me with an opportunity to connect with another important group—data center end-users or consumers. Besides, it’s not everyday I get to follow Mariel Hemmingway or present before Nigel Barker.

Given today’s digital lifestyle, more and more consumers are becoming concerned about where their data comes from. When they access e-mail, download a video or share photos they want to utilize the greenest technology or systems. Many now realize that a simple Internet search could access a server database say in China, affecting the carbon emissions in that country. Consumers understand that someone has to power all the sheep throwing on Facebook and know that it’s better for the planet if it’s powered by green servers. The energy efficiency of our data centers is no longer just a business challenge, it’s a global, widespread issue affecting everyone. This was one of the topics I discussed during my keynote and it seemed to resonate well with the audience.

So my green data center crusade continues. This week I’m in Washington D.C. with Paul Bell, president of Dell’s Global Public-Sector, talking to federal-agency leaders and policymakers about energy-efficient IT.

I, along with others at Dell, continue to spread the word about the energy efficiency of our products, our efforts to be the greenest technology company on the planet and how we’re helping customers meet their environmental goals.

Until next time, Happy Earth Day!

The year 2008 is quickly coming to a close and there are many in the industry who are making predictions for 2009. While we’re not inclined to try to predict what’s going to happen next year, we do have some very smart people that have their eyes set on the trends that are impacting us as a company as well as our customers.

One such person is our own Dr. Albert Esser, vice president in Dell’s Data Center Infrastructure Group who is focused on energy issues related to customer’s data centers.

I sat down with Albert recently to ask him about trends specific to the data center and he outlined five major issues for you to consider. Two of the trends he urges customers to keep watch of are virtualization and energy-efficiency as it relates to the data center, which were also mentioned in a list recently put out by Baseline Magazine in its top 11 trends for IT list. Their list includes issues that go far beyond the data center but are still of relevance for CIOs.

Let’s hear what Albert has to say.