Data Centers are competitive advantages for the Internet companies, and how much you know about your competitors helps plan your future. Microsoft's Daniel Costello has been a heavily recruited data center executive for months (I think I count 8 from when I first heard he was being recruited) He finally made his decision ... to join Google, leaving Microsoft.
Who is Daniel Costello? Daniel is the person in the center of this photo.
And had this role at Microsoft.
Daniel Costello, director of Data Center Services
Global Foundation Services
Daniel Costello is the director for Data Center Services at Microsoft, responsible for data center research and engineering, standards and technologies, data center technology roadmap, Generation 4 data center engineering, data center automation and integration with IT hardware, operating systems and applications. Daniel also works closely with Microsoft Research on proof of concepts in support of the data center of the future and manages a team of facility engineers and service architects.
I don't know Daniel's new role at Google. Director of Generation 4 5 data center engineering? :-) Given Daniel's move to Google, I doubt we'll hear for quite a while what he is doing.
I think Daniel could have the title Data Center Wizard as he knows more than anyone else in the industry about Google and Microsoft's data centers and IT infrastructure. How much is Daniel's knowledge worth?
Here are two videos from Daniel's presentation 2 years ago at GigaOm.
The funny thing is I just happened to connect to LinkedIn last week. Daniel provided no information for this blog post, but I had a hunch it was time to connect.
Daniel is one sharp guy who has impressed many. Here is my post about his engineering approach.
Microsoft’s Daniel Costello, Engineering Approach to Solve Data Center Design
Microsoft’s Daniel Costello has a good post on an engineering approach to solve data center business problems.
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Now let’s look at Daniel’s steps.
1) Time to Market
2) Cost
3) Efficiency
4) Flexibility and Density
And the goals of the Microsoft team.
The Goals our Engineering Team Set
· Reduce time-to-market and deliver the facility at the same time as the computing infrastructure
· Reduce capital cost per megawatt and reduce COGS per kilowatt per month by class
· Increase ROIC and minimize the up-front investment for data centers
· Differentiate reliability and redundancy by data center class and design the system to be flexible to accommodate any class of service in the same facility
· Drive data center efficiency up while lowering PUE, water usage, and overall TCOE
· Develop a solution to accept multiple levels of density and form factors, such as racks, skids, or containers