Today we added Eddie Schutter from AT&T to the Data Center Pulse board of the directors. You can see the press release here. But for this blog entry, I wanted to give a bit more information and perspective on Eddie and our expansion into local chapters.
I have worked closely with Eddie on emerging technology opportunities and industry efforts for almost three years. The most recent was with the Green Grid where we both sit on the Advisory Council with a great group of End Users. In February, 2010 Eddie and I co-presented at the Green Grid Technical Conference in San Jose, California. The presentation was focused on the GG birds of a feather session and the DCP top 10. This was a result of the collaboration agreement between DCP and the Green Grid established in early 2010.
in April, 2010 the DCP Board decided that it was time for us to harness the interest and capabilities of local end users by establishing DCP chapter groups. We started informal chapters in Utah and Arizona because of the activities and interest in those two states. The first meetings were great, but we realized very quickly that we needed someone to focus on developing this program from the ground up. The Utah end users that we knew of represented over 200MW of current future consumption in the state. The Arizona end users represented over 50MW and that was just scratching the surface. Eddie came to mind immediately to help lead this effort. As mentioned in the press release, Eddie has been active in many different industry groups including the Green Grid, Uptime Institute and 7x24 Exchange in which he helped start the Lone Star Chapter in Austin, Texas. Eddie's day job is the Sr Technical Director of Data Center Architecture and Planning for AT&T. Over the years we have shared best practices, debated on technological approaches and generally brainstormed on what is possible. One of the most memorable was the Data Center Pulse working session at the 7x24 Exchange in Phoenix, Arizona in November of 2009. Eddie, along with the majority of the DCP board, Olivier Sanche and other end user leaders met following the session and decided on a strategy to push for next generation cooling/compute solutions. Stay tuned for more blog updates on recent updates that were spawned from that great session.
We have great expectations from Eddie and the development of the local chapters. We believe that this is a very productive and effective way to have end users participate in work that will directly benefit their companies and the DCP efforts. The majority of the DCP work has been done over linkedin and through conference partnerships over the last few years. This approach will allow a much larger group of individuals have direct input in helping us to shape our efforts to influence the industry. The voice of the customer will get bigger but also smaller - more focused on their own backyard.
With that, I wanted to address a few concerns that people have raised over the last few weeks.
First, we are not competing with any of the industry groups. Quite the contrary. We plan to partner up with other industry groups to optimize peoples time and increase participation of end users. We plan to approach this very much like the conference partnerships we have established. There will be DCP end user only meetings to allow for open dialog and focus to synthesize content and requests before we meet with the industry. There will then be additional sessions with the industry to engage and share the learning and discussion/debate from those sessions.
Secondly, we will be establishing additional chapters, but we want to make sure that we do this in a controlled manner. Eddie will be establishing the bylaws and governance to ensure that we can scale and optimize the local work of our members.
Lastly, this is not just a North American effort. We plan to establish local chapters globally. For example, the activity in China, India, Europe and other parts of Asia (to name a few) is amazing. There are tens of billions of dollars being spent globally in new and retrofit data centers.
Eddie has a full plate, but we have every confidence that he will be able to deliver a great program. If you are interested in helping or have ideas please email info@datacenterpulse.org or contact Eddie directly at eddie.schutter@datacenterpulse.org.
Thanks, Dean
