Japan announced today that it has emerged from recession, following Germany and France’s announcements last week that their economies also grew in the second quarter. 

Moody’s Economy.com Business Confidence survey shows that confidence has been steadily increasing since March ‘09.

For the first time since September ’08, “Economic Recovery” nudges above “Economic Crisis” in Google Search Volume in early August. 

In addition to this, economic forecasts (WW GDP, US GDP, and EU GDP) point to a recovery over the next 6 months.  A couple of quotes:

• The direction of real GDP is even expected to turn from negative to positive in the current quarter. The academic arbiters of the business cycle at the National Bureau of Economic Research will eventually proclaim that the Great Recession ended sometime this summer.
         Moody’s Economy.Com – July 7, 2009
• The global economy is beginning to pull out of a recession unprecedented in the post–World War II era
         International Monetary Fund, imf.org – July 8, 2009

So, why am I bombarding this blog with various optimistic economic data? Because if we really are pulling out of the abyss, I’m worried that many companies out there are sitting on servers that will not be ready for the increased demand right around the corner.         

John Gantz, IDC Vice President in his keynote speech at the start of this year’s CIO Summit in Auckland was quoted as saying there will be an unprecedented amount of IT-driven change in the next four years.  He projected that there will be a three-fold rise in mobile users and information will grow five-fold, resulting in heightened levels of security and privacy and questions on which data to store or throw away. He also mentioned that the number of interactions between people on networks will grow eight times.

So this got me thinking… Is your company looking to differentiate and go after more market share while your competitors are hunkered down and not investing in the downturn? My guess is that there are a lot of IT managers being asked to support more social media, offer more SaaS, deploy more virtual machines, and support more real time analytics to get a leg up on the competition.  My gut tells me that it will be hard to do all of this with older servers that were put into another year of extended warranty because that felt like the right move when the proverbial economic s**t hit the fan last year. 

It’s critical to be prepared for when the recovery comes, and data points to an economic turnaround happening now – are you positioning your department to own it when it arrives?

Bryce

Evolution happens.  In matters of nature, Charles Darwin is clearly the dominant expert and the Theory of Evolution has stood the test of time and much scrutiny by scientific experts for decades.  However, the pace of innovation and change that happens in nature is insufficient as a means to evolve technology.

Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a slow gradual process. Darwin wrote, "…Natural selection acts only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by short and sure, though slow steps”

Personally, I’m very happy that the Theory of Evolution does not govern the pace of innovation for computing.  In matters of technology evolution, Gordon Moore is the expert.  In 1965, Dr Moore observed a trend in silicon manufacturing that has subsequently driven the pace of innovation, revolutionalized an industry and quite possibly society.  Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years.  Read more about Moore’s Law

In March 2009, Intel introduced the Nehalem microarchitecture where the innovative use of these transistors is truly phenomenal.  Besides offering nearly double the performance for many 2 socket server applications since last year, these processors offer a FIVE - fold improvement in energy efficiency versus the first generation of intel xeon quad-core processors introduced only two years ago.

ð       5x lower idle processor power (10W vs 50W)

ð       5x the number of power states between full power and idle power operation

ð       5x faster transitions (lower latency) between these power states

Today, Intel’s Boyd Davis discussed the innovations coming soon for the expandable 4-socket and larger servers, codenamed Nehalem-EX processor.  For this segment of the server market the bandwidth gains are expected to be staggering - offering up to 9x the memory in bandwidth over the highly scalable six-core xeon 7400 based servers available today.  Learn more about Nehalem EX

The question for IT managers and business leaders is how fast are you evolving your compute infrastructure capability.  Older single-core processor infrastructure is consuming valuable resources (space, power/cooling, maintenance) while often running underutilized and consuming full power.  Replacing that infrastructure can deliver dramatic benefits in performance and operational efficiency.  The savings from server replacement can provide a rapid payback on investment – stimulating re-investment or improved business results.

The faster you move … the more competitive you can become.  Just like in nature, business is survival of the fittest.  How fit is your IT infrastructure? 

Take advantage of Moore’s Law – Evolve Faster.