Top 5 Data Center Stories, Week of May 18th, 2013

Hot-Aisle-Containment-in-Mi

A look at the hot aisle containment systems at the Microsoft data center in Quincy, Washington, which has since expanded to include modular data centers housed outdoors. (Photo: Microsoft)

For your weekend reading, here’s a recap of five noteworthy stories that appeared on Data Center Knowledge this past week.

Digital Realty Trust Launches DCIM Software - Data center developers provide the bricks, mortar, power and ping to support their tenants. But they’re increasingly finding the need to get into the software side of the data center business, offering tools to make management easier. The latest to do so is turnkey wholesale giant Digital Realty Trust, which today launched EnVision, a comprehensive data center infrastructure management (DCIM) solution.

The Azure Cloud, Exposed to the Azure Sky - The Microsoft data center campus in Quincy, Washington illustrates the evolution of data center design from huge concrete shells to compact modules sitting outdoors on a slab. Data centers have become glamorous, but the Quincy campus is at the forefront of a new minimalist approach offering one vision of the way of the future, and the way of the cloud.

Bloomberg Plans $710 Million Data Center in N.Y. Suburb - Financial media giant Bloomberg L.P. is planning to build a $710 million data center in Orangetown, N.Y., a northern suburb of New York City not far from a major data hub for the New York Stock Exchange, according to local media.

NY Times: Data Centers Acting as 'Wildcat Power Utilities' - The New York Times has resumed its critique of the data center business, suggesting that the industry has become a “wildcat power utility” by reselling power to customers at a profit. The Times report examines the use of a common business structure – the real estate investment trust, or REIT – by data center operators, “allowing them to eliminate most corporate taxes.”

IO Immersant Brings Virtual Reality to the Data Center - Ready or not, virtual reality is coming to the data center. IO this week demonstrated a new application that provides a 3D visual representation of a customer’s data center environment, allowing them to “walk through” their data center and check operating conditions, much as players in World of Warcraft explore Azeroth.>