We have started publishing our annual Symposium Speaker Series — video interview with our underwriter keynote speakers. This first edition includes interviews by Kevin Heslin with key executives from Schneider Electric, Emerson Network Power and FORTRUST.

Data center dilemma: Build your own or outsource

DCIM + ITSM: Emerson Trellis and IBM Tivoli partnership

Adopting a modular approach for data center design, construction and delivery

Be sure to register today for Uptime Institute Symposium 2013.

A 2012 Uptime Institute survey of global data center owners revealed that 85% use some form of colocation or cloud computing. Yet 54% had no confidence in their ability to compare cost and performance of outsourcing alternatives dependably.

Currently, the vast majority of enterprises deploy a hybrid computing environment. The decision is no longer binary—whether or not to outsource. It’s multi-faceted—how many and how much of each alternative to deploy.

The sessions at Uptime Institute Symposium will instill confidence in your decisions when working with a third party service provider.

FORCSS: A framework for effective communication and decision making
The Special Focus of Symposium 2013 is Uptime Institute’s FORCSS™ Methodology, a means to capture, compare, and prioritize the financial, risk, and performance factors that impact IT-dependent business decisions.

FORCSS recognizes and weighs the benefits and exposures of IT or applications deployment alternatives: internal data center(s), colocation, hosting, or public cloud.

Uptime Institute will present the methodology, and host a series of executive FORCSS panels that will explore how these decisions are made at large IT organizations:
• Methods for Determining Comparative Cost of IT Service Delivery
• Quantifying the Cost of an IT Service Outage
• How to Conduct Service Quality Analysis for Internal and Third-Party Data Centers

In addition to the FORCSS programming, Uptime Institute Symposium will provide even more expert advice on how to navigate the third-party service provider landscape.

The why and how of third-party data center due diligence
Many recent media reports describe enterprise IT staff’s “shock” at a third-party data center outage. But upfront due diligence could have provided appropriate insight into the performance potential of a specific solution. Investigating and accepting the specific capabilities of third-party data center services should be baked into your organization’s outsourced Digital Infrastructure strategy. Keith Klesner of Uptime Institute will share recent downtime anecdotes and explain how to be a better customer of third-party data center services.

Large enterprises and the cloud: Time to make the move?
In this session, Ken Male will discuss how IT organization in Global 2000 Enterprises are evolving toward the use of hybrid cloud architectures. Relying on findings from TheInfoPro’s full portfolio of research, Ken will share information about barriers to adoption and enabling technologies in cloud environments, including software-defined networks, storage and networks automation, converged infrastructure platforms, and orchestration frameworks. TheInfoPro’s surveys also tracks the performance of cloud vendors such as Amazon, Verizon, Rackspace, and HP.

Register today for Uptime Institute Symposium. I look forward to seeing you this May in Santa Clara!

Omaha, Nebraska-based colo Scott Data Center earned Tier III Design Certification for its data center expansion plans. The Uptime Institute conducted an independent third party review of Scott Data Center’s design drawings which includes the addition of 20 megawatts of power and cooling capability to its existing infrastructure.

The Omaha World Herald published a story about the expansion last week, quoting Uptime Institute VP Julian Kudtrizki:

Now certified, the expanded data center will be the lone multitenant operation in Nebraska or Iowa and only the fifth in the United States to receive [Uptime Institute Tier III Certification]. It also means more major businesses will employ the data center’s services, Kudritzki said. “This is absolutely a big deal,” Kudritzki said. “It’s going to be a huge competitive differentiator.”