meet me room
How would you encourage a school
leaver to get involved in your
industry? What are their options?
Interestingly, I sat on a panel at a
data centre event in Manchester
recently and we discussed the very
subject. It is difficult in our area
of expertise as we are way behind
the recruitment curve and have to
compete with the ‘sexy’ parts of
the technology industry such as
gaming and cyber.
At the moment my advice
would be google ‘data centre
careers’ and see what the big
companies are up to. Personally, I
think that we can do a lot more. We
already have a number of degree
courses and the dialogue has
started around the idea of creating
apprenticeships which is a very
good thing. However, I still think
that as an industry we can and
should do more and it is something
that I’m trying to be actively
involved in so watch this space.
In addition to earning a living,
how else has your career created
value in your life?
Despite being constantly astounded
by innovative, ground-breaking
technology within our sector, quite
simply, it’s the people. I’ve been
lucky enough to have met some
wonderful people over the years
from all walks of data centre life.
We are fortunate in that our
industry demands intelligent,
interesting, imaginative and
creative individuals and I have had
the opportunity and the pleasure
of engaging with quite a lot of them
during my relatively short time (12
years) in the IT industry.
Relationships are important
to me and I spend quite a bit of my
time maintaining them. As well as
that my career has given me some
wonderful memories.
What, in your opinion, is the
most important aspect of a
successful data centre (e.g.
security, energy efficiency?)
Tough question. I think, with
my ITIL hat on, that the answer
has to be the move from data
centre management to a more
all-embracing data centre service
management with DCIM at its core.
To have a holistic view of the estate
and have real-time management
information and analytics on how
the interconnected elements of the
data centre are running is a very
powerful thing where efficiency
savings on power, space and cooling
are just the tip of the iceberg.
It’s tough to implement DCIM
but there is so much to be gained
from putting the effort in. Let’s face
it, in our world of now, data centres
are at the heart of practically
everything we do. Think of the
strides we have made in making
vehicles more efficient and eco-
friendly through analytics. Why not
data centres?
What are the biggest changes
you have seen in the data centre
industry? In a nutshell?
Scale x nn! One of the data centres
I operate is 10,000m 2 in size. Not
very big by today’s standards
but very big back when it was
designed in the mid-nineties and
bigger by almost 2,000m 2 than
Microsoft’s first data centre built
in 1989. Super-compute marches
on and has moved from giga-flops,
beyond, tera-flops and the race is
on for exascale.
You can also throw Quantum
computing in the mix which is
Move aside
Attenborough.
A missed calling
perhaps?
September 2017 | 17