Amsterdam

Sorry for the delaying in getting this, last weeks blog out, I was in Amsterdam and then had a few client meetings.
Anyway, lets move to my trip to Amsterdam, it was lovely when I landed and made my way to the city, the canals and warmth were exactly what you need after clouds and drizzle. I enjoyed lunch in Rembrantplein and made my way to the hotel.
Later, I enjoyed a nice steak at El Rancho, the best steak house in Amsterdam.
I was up early to attend the 451 Group Datacentre transformation seminar at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky, this was a really interesting seminar and covered the growth of cloud, the need for energy efficiency, and the implications of world wide legislation/regulation relating to the data center arena.
Afterwards, I was taken out to dinner by 3 complete strangers, where the topics of conversation where "Withnail & I", the cult british film of the 80's starring Richard E Curtis and one of the McGann brothers, the cultural and illict delights of Amsterdam and some of the transformation topics, including the availability of finance to build new data centres. This is only to be expected, city types see the growth of the cloud, assume that big bucks can be made and provide the funds for data centre construction, however the growth of the cloud is merely a way for DC operators to fill space in their existing DC's and this after funding rounds in the Tech Boom which left many data centres with lots of space and not much else. Are we to see the same thing happen again?. Will new data centres under planning and construction now see less growth than they expected, especially when articles like this one occasionally slip under the mafia's radar?
http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2011/04/19/246473/Moving-to-the-cloud-39could-increase-energy-costs39.htm

I agree with this statement, and believe that the wholesale movement of on premise computing to data centres does increase energy use, and in the UK at least this growth bangs headlong into the forecasted reduction of generative capacity caused by the decommisssioning of nuclear power stations, and large capital injections of cash to coal fired power stations to meet the LCPD, which in turn leads to reduced production hours.
We live in interesting times, and sometimes I despair of what I call the hand differential, where the right hand does not know what the left is or is not doing, but still I will keep blogging and tweeting on the issue in the hope that things will change.

On Thursday I attended a course at my local business hub, I actually gained a qualification, the CIEH Level 2 Award in Environmental Principles and Best practice, well I'm awaiting the result but the course content and exam were not too difficult, and I suspect are aimed at getting a lot of people through. That said, although a lot of the course was (to me at least) common sense, its good to get some best practice information.

A meeting on Friday was cancelled, and strangely enough my meeting was with someone who was also at the seminar in Amsterdam, but we didn't meet there and neither did we meet on Friday, I'm going to catch up with him after easter.

The weekend was full of gardening, a BBQ and a boot sale.
This week we're on an Admin week, where we sort out all our receipts and sales and general tax etc.
As its Easter this weekend, we'll be scaling down our activities this week and concentrating on planning.
Have a good Easter, Royal Wedding and Bank Holiday, but we'll be tweeting and blogging as usual.