Have you ever noticed that there are some people that you can send an email to and never get a response.  Not a delayed response, none at all. Ever.  How to they stay organized?  If you have more than a 100 messages in your inbox as you read this, you might be one of those people!

In today’s business world I challenge you to consider your inbox as a great work-flow tool.  People that work with me frequently will often hear me say “Please send me an email reminder and I will see that it gets done”.  It might not get done right away, but you can rest assured that if you email me a request, I will either do it, delegate it AND follow up with whom I delegated it to, or reply telling you that I will not have time to perform the task.  You see – I use my inbox as a work flow tool – I am constantly pushing myself to complete the email thread/task/request etc., so that I can archive the email.  Until such time as the email thread is complete, it does not leave my inbox.  In such a manner, I can assure myself that nothing slips through the cracks.

You can accomplish the same thing by simply creating a way to organize your old emails and then moving them from your inbox when they are complete.  Any email system will allow you to create sub-folders, here is what you might create when you set up your work mailbox:

You should have these by default:
- Inbox
- Drafts
- Sent Items
- Deleted Items
 
I propose you create at least a few additional folders:
- Clients
- Prospects
- Vendors
- Personal
- Staff
- Other

If you want to get HIGHLY organized, add sub-folders:
- Clients
   - Acme Tool
   - Big Time Auto
   - Charlie Cheap Seats
- Prospects
   - Delta Digging
   - Echo Excavating
- Vendors
   - Phone Company
   - Plumber
- Personal
   - Family
   - Hobbies
- Staff
   - Direct Reports
   - co-workers
- Other

While it might take a little bit of time to set up and keep on top of, you will find that you can always find things easily when you need them by opening up the appropriate folders and you will have a great feeling of accomplishment knowing that as your inbox remains clear that you are staying caught up on things.  You can rest assured that not only will your boss notice, but your friends & family will enjoy how you always respond to them and never ‘drop the ball’ on something requested of you.

Lastly, set a reasonable limit to how many messages you will allow to ‘pile up’ in your inbox before you dedicate an evening to dive in and get caught up.  A good rule of thumb is no more than double the average number of emails that you get in one day!

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Jim

One of my first engineering professors was pretty old school, having earned his reputation long before the days of computer aided design, finite element analysis and precision engineering.  He was the first one to teach me about the ‘safety factor’ – something that every engineer already knows intuitively: “Take whatever you need to support the load, and triple it”.  If you were tasked with building a bridge that needed to support 200 Tons – build it to support 600 tons!

Over the past few days, I have recently been accused of ‘over-engineering’ another part of the Data Center – our Internet Backbone Providers.  While some Data Centers are comfortable having 2 connections to the backbone of the Internet, the lifeblood of our business – we added our fourth connection this week.  Yes, that is four separate Gigabit connections to four different bandwidth providers, any two of which can support the full capacity of our Data Center.

For 14 years, we have taken the uptime of our data centers and core network very seriously, learning along the way of course, though sparing no expense or effort to offer our clients the best assurance possible that their Data Center would be up to the task at hand.  We have always purchased twice the bandwidth needed by our clients, and will continue to over-engineer and reinvest in the data center to give our clients the piece of mind they need.

I wonder if that professor of 20 years ago had any idea the simple lesson taught would apply in many more ways than just designing mechanical things?

Jonathan Koomey, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory calculated that from 2000 to 2005, the aggregate electricity use by data centers doubled and today Data Centers consume over 1 percent of the world’s total electricity use.  To add fuel to the fire, the number of data centers continues to grow at an alarming rate!  (Hell, even we jumped on the bandwagon in 2008 adding one more data center to the mix)

Data centers are extremely inefficient – with often less than half of all the electricity used being dedicated to actually powering the servers.  So where does the rest of all that electricity go?  While some goes to lighting, and a some more to electrical losses from large batteries and transformers – the majority of that non-compute power goes to cooling.  Monster air conditioners that could make even an Eskimo shiver!

Now, what if someone came to you and asked you to design a data center that used HALF as much energy.  Could you do it?  The answer is actually quite simple and is called Free Data Center Cooling or Outside Ambient Air Cooling.  With servers being built today able to withstand a much broader range of temperatures, there are many climates where it is able to design a data center to use very efficient fans and the air outside to cool the computers, saving upwards of 90% of all that electricity previously used for cooling.  Granted it might not be right for every data center, and it will take some time for the skeptics to become believers – but it is definitely on its way.

While we are proud that we have driven the PUE (Power usage effectiveness) of our current precision cooled data center to a very respectable 1.5, we are already planning on building our next data center using free cooling and will be striving for a PUE of less than 1.1!  Clients will have the option of choosing high-efficiency precision cooled OR ultra-efficient free cooling – either way, we are helping them save money while also being environmentally friendly.

Watch for my upcoming posts where I will be outlining our initial design plans for our next Ultra Green data center that we are designing.  (Of feel free to contact me directly if you are really impatient and can’t wait!)

How would you like to buy the power you use at your home – pay for how much you use, or pay for the absolute maximum that you could possibly need each month?  I have a hunch you answered “Pay for just what I use”, right?  So why would you rent space in a data center and not pay the exact same way?  Yet still today a majority of all data centers will charge you a flat fee for each electric circuit that you need.

Here is the most typical example if you would allow me to get a little technical on you for just a second:  You decide that colocation is a smart option for your company.  You find a data center that you trust and rent a full cabinet for all of your servers.  Your sales rep tells you that each one comes with one (1) 20amp circuit – just like the ones you have in your home or office, it is a standard US plug that can handle 20 amps of electricity flowing through it at 120 volts. (The first circuit is baked into the initial price of the cabinet) You plug in 8 servers, and your IT team tells you that they need another circuit for the 9th server which costs you $250/month.  Yes – that is correct – you have to pay a full $250/month to get that 9th server running, even though you will only be needing about 2 amps of the 2nd 20amp circuit. 

Doesn’t make sense?  The answer is pretty simple – find a data center that offers revenue grade metered power, and pay for just what you use.  I can assure you that you will save much more money in the long run, here is how:

In summary – power is now the biggest cost in any data center, and that is passed on to you.  By only paying for what you use, you will save money as well as help shift the IT world towards more green & energy efficient computing!  Want to know more on this? Feel free to email me directly.  Also watch for my next part in this series on real time energy efficiency monitoring in your next data center.

Vendors - this post is specifically for your benefit.  Every company needs vendors & partners to grow and thrive, though recently I received some criticism that I didn't have time to take a meeting with a prospective vendor. If you are in sales, take note -  the following statement will most likely apply to a majority of CEO's and business owners in today's fast paced world:

I like short meetings.  I have adult ADD and a type A personality.  On top of that, I have at least 25 different things thrown at me every day, so if I am in a meeting for more than a half hour I am already going backwards.  (Assume a 10 hour work day, that is 2.5 things per hour that I have to get done just to keep from falling behind!)  So yes - I like short meetings.  Actually, I love short meetings.  They are productive and I have the ability to remain focused for the entire meeting.  When everyone in the room is compelled to have a short meeting, it usually means that they are just as busy and are going to work quickly to get the task at hand complete as quickly as possible.  I respect those people.  I want to do more work with them.

Want to do business with me?  Don’t invite me to an hour long meeting or a 2 hour lunch.  Send me an Outlook invite that I can push one button and have it automatically pop onto my calendar.  Make it an hour or less.  Want another meeting with me?  Easy - just make sure that we finish our first meeting with a few minutes to spare.  It gives both of us time to reply to a few emails, and get to our next meeting on time!

**edited on July 5th* 

Yet here I go - my first blog & my first tweet all in the same day.  (Yes, I am on twitter as well: http://twitter.com/salviski)  So why did I do it?  Pretty simple - I wanted to.  I wanted to stay in touch with people.  I wanted people to stay in touch with me.  I wanted to learn.  I wanted to teach others.  I wanted to stay up on the newest technology.  I wanted to continue to be a leader in technology. And I wanted to have fun!

I want to thank the clients, staff and friends that encouraged me to tweet & blog, turns out it was good social pressure.  Do I think that you will see me with a public profile on facebook or myspace any time soon?  No, not too likely though in light of where this is all going, you never know right?!

So I will now make some time to follow a select few on twitter, share some of the things that I am passionate about in this blog, add a few RSS feeds and let a few hardcopy magazines subscriptions run out.

Jim