The datacenter is everywhere

When we talk about pervasive computing, we're usually talking about mobile devices like cell phones or, if we're being really exotic, the various sorts of wearable gizmos that get made fun of in Dilbert cartoons. But I look at pervasive from the other end of the pipe. Hence, The Pervasive Datacenter, the name of the blog that kicks off with this post. From my point of view, it's the datacenter, the software that it runs, and its connections that are everywhere just as much as the peripherals out at the end of the network.

This blog will have its home base in the datacenter itself and will cover topics from servers big and small, to multi-core processors, to operating systems, to virtualization, to power and cooling concerns. However, it will also look at the software and the services out in the network cloud that are consuming datacenter computing cycles and storage and thereby determining the future of the back-end. I'll also spend some time on the bigger questions: Is Software as a Service the next big thing or merely Application Service Providers warmed over? What's the future of Open Source in a Web-delivered software model? Do operating systems even matter any longer?

And, because my premise is that the pervasive datacenter touches everything, I'll feel free to, now and then, head out to the very edge of the network. I'll try to stay clear of overly trendy and self-referential debates, but will write about important trends in client devices from UltraMobile PCs to cameras and the services that run on them.

I'm a Principal IT Advisor with Illuminata, Inc., an IT Advisory firm in Nashua NH. I've been an industry analyst for about seven years now. Before that I spent most of my professional career with Data General, where I held a variety of product marketing positions over the course of more than a decade. My first product was the MV/7800 Eclipse minicomputer which cost something like $50K and which my current cell phone would mock for its relatively meager memory capacity and CPU horsepower. I've also written a variety of software over the years, including the Directory Freedom file manager. Passions include travel and photography (much reinvigorated by digital).

I welcome comments, suggestions, and impassioned (but civil) debate. Some aspects of IT may have become less scintillating than they once were. They may even have become commodities, whatever that means exactly. But it's hard for me to see how anyone can say that what's going on in the IT industry as a whole today isn't interesting, important, and invigorating.