Information is an incredible source of value, and companies increasingly need information to run their businesses more effectively. 

Cloud computing is the newest technological wave in the data center industry. 

"Snowtober” on the East Coast has raised many questions about the managerial reliability of several major utilities.

This is the second of three columns inspired by a webinar I did for Mission Critical on August 22. 

Most popular movies spawn a sequel, and it looks like the widely accepted power usage effectiveness (PUE) has achieved a similar distinction. 

Early on a June morning, the temperature hovers at 52 degrees in the high deserts of Central Oregon. Even though the daytime highs can soar to 104 degrees in summer months, the cold nights are key to the sustainable cooling system in the Vault—one of the only co-location data centers in the nation that is dedicated to sustainable energy use and has Tier III Constructed Facility certification.

Over the course of the past decade, organizations have begun to rely significantly more on information technology (IT) systems to support business-critical applications. Organizations such as banks, telecommunications companies, internet service providers, and cloud/co-location facilities rely heavily on the availability of their data centers as many of their customers are paying a premium for access to a variety of IT applications. 

With respect to disaster planning and backup power requirements, Hurricane Katrina was a real wakeup call. Prior to Katrina, most hospitals and emergency medical facilities thought their trusty backup generators would provide all the long-term power protection they needed in an emergency. 

Designers of information technologies (IT) facilities today are challenged to keep up with several varieties of environments, some of which are mission critical and others that are not. 

Is putting end-users first a business philosophy or a design philosophy, or both? Saying that end-users come first is easy, but system designers and equipment suppliers find that putting end-users first can be hard to do.