Articles from Forbes.com

California Reveals Price It Pays For Renewable Energy

Explore Forbes.com (Feb 7 2012) Construction , Emissions , Solar , Wind

California has one of the nation’s most ambitious renewable energy mandates – 33% of its electricity must be carbon free by 2020 – yet the price of that power had long remain locked in a black box, kept confidential by state regulators. Not any longer. Forced by a new law to publish the electricity rates of utility contracts it has approved, the California Public Utilities Commission on Friday issued a report detailing what green energy costs consumers.

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Comment Mentions:   Pacific Gas & Electric   Forbes

How Cloud Redefines Our Most Important Business Technology Relationships

Explore Forbes.com (Jan 25 2012) Cloud Computing

In a previous post, David Nichols, principal and CIO services leader for Ernst & Young IT Advisory Services, outlined some compelling business cases for the cloud, and described the threshold many enterprises have yet to cross before they become cloud-intensive enterprises. But what’s it doing to our important relationships — between companies, IT managers, business managers, and even outsourcers? (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Facebook

Intel: Q4 Beats The Street

Explore Forbes.com (Jan 19 2012)

Intel posted better-than-expected fourth quarter results. The chipmaker reported revenue of $13.9 million, ahead of the Street at $13.72 billion; profits of 64 cents a share beat the Street at 61 cents. Revenue was up 22% from a year ago. Gross margin in the quarter was 65.5%, up from 64.8% a year ago. Operating income of $4.8 million was up 20% from a year ago; net income of $3.5 billion was up 11%. The company noted that revenue in Q4 was negatively impacted by floods in Thailand and the resulting supply shortages of hard drives. Intel said that the drive shortages reduced orders for microprocessors, but that the situation did not impact PC unit sales in the quarter “with demand trends playing out as expected.” (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Intel

Storing Data In The Cloud Raises Compliance Challenges

Explore Forbes.com (Jan 19 2012) Monitoring , Cloud Computing , Storage

For the past few years, cloud-based storage has oscillated somewhere between a replacement strategy for existing back-up storage solutions (i.e. tape) and a typically inexpensive but complex real-time storage solution for online web properties and enterprises. Much like the first waves of virtualization, many organizations are struggling to figure out where cloud storage fits within their existing IT infrastructure. Unlike basic server virtualization, and possibly more critical however, is the determination of if and when cloud storage is even legal. Cloud storage carries with it an extra layer of complexity: compliance. (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Forbes

AdVoice: Unlocking Data Center Innovation in the Virtual Era

Explore Forbes.com (Jan 19 2012) Cloud Computing

Posted on behalf of contributing author, management consultant and speaker Dave Gardner The fundamentals of the data center change about every 10 years. The industry is in the midst of a transformation largely brought on by the opportunity created by cloud computing. The future has always been about the nexus of people, process and technology—technology alone doesn’t fundamentally change the game. The trends are about efficiency, innovation and productivity. Here’s a great example. The Bank of Hawaii, named Forbes #1 bank in the U.S in 2010 and 2011, is relentlessly focused on improving the customer experience. They embrace a “Moneyball” approach to enterprise IT meaning looking at every aspect of the I.T. spend to see how disadvantage can be turned to advantage. (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Interactive Data Corporation   Forbes   Dell

Rackspace: Bull and Bear Cases Revisited

Explore Forbes.com (Jan 10 2012) Cloud Computing

Following my Rackspace: Bull and Bear Cases article, I had the opportunity to speak with Bryan McGrath, Director of Finance, at Rackspace to discuss the bear case, capital efficiencies, customer base and competition. Herein are the takeaways from that discussion. If there is one thing Rackspace management wants to avoid, it’s “stranded capital.” Management adheres to a strict EVA (Economic Value Added) metric, or generating a return on capital invested that exceeds their cost of capital. Historically, Rackspace return on capital has run in the 30%s although, since the purchase of their new corporate headquarters, the fully-burdened return on capital has been increasing from 9% in 2009 to 14% year to date. (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Amazon.com   Forrester Research   Rackspace

Big Data -- Big Money Says It Is A Paradigm Buster

Explore Forbes.com (Jan 6 2012)

Big Data is attracting big money — $100 million at Accel Partners, the VC firm. “Big data is one of the biggest transformational changes in the data center and IT landscape,” said Ping Li, a partner at the VC firm Accel Partners, which is running a $100 million Big Data fund. “It happens once in a generation,” he told the audience at a Churchill Club panel in Silicon Valley. Gartner predicts that data will grow 800 percent over the next five years and 80 percent of the data will be unstructured. And just what constitutes Big Data? After SC2011, the US supercomputing conference in Seattle in November, Addison Snell, an industry analyst, blurred the lines a bit in a podcast with HPCwire. (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Amazon.com

Lying With Numbers: Green Energy Edition

Explore Forbes.com (Dec 30 2011) Construction , Carbon Tax , Emissions , Fossil Fuel

A nice little report out telling us that going green isn't in fact going to cost us anything. Which is indeed nice as just about everyone else would just love to clean up the planet, reduce pollution and not boil Gaia but we have this sneaking suspicion that the costs of doing so are going to be greater than the benefits. So to hear that it won't cost anything is just glorious: miraculous in fact. (Read Full Article)

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Federating Storage Clouds To Create New Services and Opportunities

Explore Forbes.com (Dec 29 2011) Cloud Computing , Storage

Digital storage in remote data centers has been made possible by the confluence of a number of software and infrastructure management technologies.  These technologies  have increased the effectiveness and lowered the overall costs of digital storage in the cloud.  Software technologies that have created the rapid increase in cloud storage and services include virtualization where real physical resources can be subdivided into a much larger number of virtual devices which can be rapidly deployed as needed to support many more clients.  This has resulted in higher utilization of these resources, including digital storage.  (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Amazon.com   Western Digital

How Cloud Computing is Changing Many Job Descriptions

Explore Forbes.com (Dec 26 2011) Cloud Computing

Just as cloud computing is a game-changer for many companies, it is also changing the nature of jobs – not only within the information technology department, but in other parts of the enterprise as well. Photo Credit: AspiraCon For senior-level executives, especially chief information officers, the changes reflect the more strategic role IT plays in the direction of businesses. For the business, it introduces more reliable and predictable supporting technology. “For a long period of time, IT was in that Wild West mode,” Greg Shields, partner and principal technologist with Concentrated Technology, recently told Jason Helmick of Interface Technical Training. “We were making up the rules as we go.” But companies and their IT leaders recognize that the best and most cost-effective solutions are those that may have been built and tested elsewhere. “You don’t grow your own food. (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   CA

Facebook Commits to Green Energy -- But Can It Deliver?

Explore Forbes.com (Dec 15 2011) Fossil Fuel , Cloud Computing , Servers

Facebook on Thursday announced that it will work with environmental group Greenpeace to encourage major utilities to develop renewable energy generation while creating programs to help its users to save energy and engage their communities in clean energy decisions. (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Greenpeace   Facebook

Will 2012 Be The End Of The World For Renewable Energy?

Explore Forbes.com (Dec 13 2011) Solar , Wind

It’s looking a lot like a white-knuckle Christmas for renewable energy companies. (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Forbes

Cisco: Cloud Will Soon Handle Most Data Center Workloads

Explore Forbes.com (Dec 4 2011) Cloud Computing

There has been no shortage of predictions that the cloud will eventually lead to the demise, or diminished role, of corporate data centers. However, new industry data suggests that cloud computing will soon make data centers even busier places than ever. Cisco just released its first Global Cloud Index, and it has a clear message: it doesn’t matter if you’re using applications from your own data center or from somewhere else, they will be delivered from the cloud. Organization’s data centers will be moving to the cloud in a big way. And, by extension, chances are your own organization will be as much a cloud provider as one outside the firewall. This has interesting ramifications for any organization that maintains its own data centers and for the people who run those data centers. (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Cisco

The Road Ahead: Gartner's Outlook For 2012 And Beyond

Explore Forbes.com (Dec 1 2011)

Gartner this morning unveiled its list of predictions for the IT sector for 2012 and beyond. If everything they say happens, the IT landscape is going to look a lot different than it does now. For one thing, the weather will be...cloudier. Gartner also expects that the bubble in social networking will burst by 2013, and they see off-shore manufacturing coming back home. (Or at least closer.) (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Gartner

Green Energy Economics in Action

Explore Forbes.com (Nov 24 2011) Emissions , Solar , Wind

I know that politicians are required to have an odd view of th world: what else would provide the ego necessary to think that they and they alone have the answers to life's problems? But when politics meets the green (or even Green) understanding of economics we do end up with some really rather strange results: Households currently pay £89 a year on their bills for the green energy drive, but this will increase every year to reach £280 by 2020, according to the Government’s Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC). (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Decc

Rackspace: Bull and Bear Cases

Explore Forbes.com (Nov 24 2011)

Rackspace is a darling of Wall Street, benefitting from a hefty multiple because it is viewed as a pure Cloud play. The question for investors is whether Rackspace deserves a 50x multiple and whether its current march, up 50% over past twelve months, will continue. This articles lays out the Bull and Bear case for Rackspace. Bulls for Rackspace cite the company’s early entry into The Cloud trend and the company’s ability to create an attractive business model by staying ahead of trends. Today, 81% of Rackspace’s business is providing hosting services to Small and Medium Sized Businesses (SMBs) and 19% of Rackspace’s revenues are earned through providing Cloud services, standardized software offerings. While hosting is growing at 24% year over year growth, the higher-margin Cloud segment is growing at 89% over the same period last year. Rackspace holds the number two market share position in ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Amazon.com   IBM   Rackspace

Interxion Profits From Speed In Its Data Centers

Explore Forbes.com (Nov 21 2011) Cloud Computing

Exchanges and digital media are driving the need for speed in European data centers. Interxion, based in Amsterdam with 28 centers in 11 countries across Europe, has just announced it will build a sixth data center in its Amsterdam campus. “We are seeing significant demand in Amsterdam for carrier neutral colocation space, particularly among cloud service providers and digital media providers,” said David Ruberg, Interxion’s chief executive officer when he made the announcement on the 15th. “By continuing to expand in this key market, we are demonstrating our commitment to support our customers’ current and future growth plans.” In London, the company operates a data center on Liverpool Street, conveniently close to the London Stock Exchange and about midway between the NYSE Euronext center in Baselton and the Equinix center in Slough which hosts the BATS/Chi-X operations. The company is expanding the London center with 1,700 square ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Europe   Netherlands

Lessons From President Obama's First CIO

Explore Forbes.com (Nov 16 2011)

Containers got backing this week from Swedish designers and data centre nerds, says Peter Judge. How can they fail? Modular data centres, once seen as inefficient compared compared with bespoke buildings, have been rapidaly gaining acceptance. In fact, they now have endorsement from two sources almost the exact opposite of each other – hipsters and geeks. They have been simultenously adopted by a “cool” Swedish designer and been given the thumbs-up by that engaging bunch of anoraks and train-spotters, the Green Grid. A data centre fit for Mars? Modular Data Centres Stockholm is the brainchild of Jon Karlung, who designed the Bahnhof facility in Stockholm known as the “James Bond” data centre as it is designed to look like a spy’s lair. That was very much a bespoke system but Karlung has now been converted to the idea of modular. (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Barack Obama   Vivek Kundra   Department of Defense

Big Data Knows You, Even If You Don't Know Big Data

Explore Forbes.com (Nov 15 2011)

Finance knows lots of data, from transactions to years of stock market tick data. But Big Data is something more. “Big data isn’t just about large volumes of data, it is about diverse data from web logs, sensor networks, social networks, call detail records and more,” said Scott Gnau, head of research and development at Teradata. “We define the big data space as an emerging data type and diverse analytics; it is still an emerging market.” Tony Baer, principal analyst of enterprise software at Ovum, a research firm, cites a couple of examples. Yahoo uses up to 170 petabytes of data in Hadoop, an open source software framework for very large data sets, to customize the home pages it presents to users. That improved visits click-throughs by 160 percent, he said, quoting a study by Hortonworks CEO Eric Baldeschwieler. Baer also said that eBay and Teradata have designed a ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Amazon.com   Yahoo   Facebook

Steven Chu's Gamble on Green Energy

Explore Forbes.com (Nov 6 2011) Emissions , Servers

For better or worse, Steven Chu, President Obama’s Nobel-prize winning Secretary of Energy, is likely to have greater influence over the world’s future energy economy than any other single person alive today. In the past two years, Chu has orchestrated the most significant public investment in energy innovation in U.S. history. The objective is transforming today’s high-carbon, low-efficiency energy systems into tomorrow’s low-carbon, high-efficiency systems. Whether this epic effort fails or succeeds, history will likely hold Secretary Chu responsible. The smart money says Chu will succeed. Exhibit A: the Energy Department‘s recently released “Report on the First Quadrennial Technology Review.” (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Barack Obama   Steven Chu

Why Siri Is a Google Killer

Explore Forbes.com (Oct 28 2011)

It’s now been a couple of weeks since Siri debuted as part of Apple’s (AAPL) 4S. The response from most people has been very positive. However, in my opinion, Siri is tremendously under-valued. People see it as it is today, which is already the best voice recognition application in history. But people (including high-priced sell-side Wall Street analysts) fail to see where the puck is going for Siri. Siri will be vastly more improved in as little as 2 years from now. And the boundless number of applications using Siri will explode. In the way that the January 2007 launch of iPhone set a ripple in the ocean that would eventually overtake Research In Motion (RIMM) in an all-out tsunami, I believe Siri’s launch this month spells a future crippling of Google’s business (GOOG). (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Apple   Google

What are Enterprises Really Doing in the Cloud?

Explore Forbes.com (Oct 26 2011)

You know there are developers in your company using public cloud platforms but do you really know what they are doing? You suspect it’s just test and development work but are you sure? And if it is production workloads are they taking the steps necessary to protect the company? We have the answers to these questions and you may be surprised by how far they are going. It’s tough being an infrastructure & operations professional these days. According to our ForrSight surveys for every cloud project you know about there could be 3 to 6 others you don’t know about. Business unit leaders, marketing and sales professionals and Empowered developers are leading the charge. They aren’t circumventing I&O as a sign of rebellion – they simply are trying to move quickly to drive revenue and increase productivity. While every I&O professional should be concerned about this ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Forrester Research

Defending Data Centers From Criminals And Hurricanes: What's Your Recovery Plan?

Explore Forbes.com (Oct 10 2011)

In the wake of new and escalating cybercrime threats to data centers around the world, and the seemingly increasingly violent natural disasters hitting regions every season, now seems to be the perfect time to review and revisit what’s working and what’s not in IT disaster recovery plans. For organizations lacking a true disaster recovery plan or business continuity plan – and according to recent research there are a quite a few of these out there – there’s never been a better time than the present. AFCOM, a non-partisan association for data center management with more than 4,500 members worldwide, recently conducted a survey of its members to uncover the status, success and shortcomings of today’s current disaster recovery and business recovery plans. AFCOM found some surprising and concerning results, including that more than 15 percent of data centers have no plan for business continuity or disaster recovery ... (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Forbes

The Swedish Data Center Of The Future

Explore Forbes.com (Aug 19 2011) Construction , Cloud Computing

1 of 9 Next » A new kind of modular data center A new kind of modular data center An overhead mockup of MDC's data center scheme. shares tweets Share * The Forbes 400 * World's Billionaires * Celebrity 100 * World's Leading Companies more + * Things are on the up for U.S. billionaires with more than half of them adding to their net worth in a year which once again saw Bill Gates as the richest of them all. (Read Full Article)

Comment Mentions:   Bill Gates   Forbes