Data Center Trends: More Machines and More Megawatts

Yesterday I visited with CoreNap, a local co-location facility here in Austin, Texas, to understand how trends like energy consumption, the down economy and cloud computing might be affecting its business. After learning that I was standing in the same data center that hosted servers for famous Web 1.0 flops such as Garden.com, and that the two guys chatting with me had actually built most of the data center themselves, I was even more eager to hear their perspective.

I interviewed Kenneth Smith, CEO of CoreNap, and Frank Bieser, the CFO and CMO, and learned that in the 14 years the two have been hosting servers and providing bandwidth, power consumption has gone up to more than a megawatt per day, and that in general customers can fit a lot more computing power in a smaller space. I also learned that cloud computing is a term these guys have started hearing from a lot of customers in the last few months, but only one prospective customer out of more than 300 decided that the cloud worked better than co-location for its business. For more on changes to the data center and ways CoreNap is trying to save on energy costs, check out my interview with Smith.

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