Afcom in the Eye of the Storm

Hurricanes and the need for data center standards look to be at the top of the agenda for Afcom's Data Center World user conference in Atlanta next week.

Following the destruction wrought by hurricanes Frances and Jeanne, users are worried about the threat to their own sites, according to Afcom officials. Such is the extent of their concern that Afcom has even booked a data center manager from Dendrite to explain how his facility survived Hurricane Isabelle last year.

Some 450 data center managers, many of them from the southern states ravaged by the recent spate of hurricanes, are expected to attend the conference.

"It's a very current issue with what has been going on recently," said Afcom president Jill Eckhaus. "Because we are in Atlanta, we have a lot of local people coming, so they will be very interested if you look at the news, there seems to be a hurricane every day."

Standards, or the lack of them, is the other big headache for data center managers as they attempt to ensure that different manufacturers' gear plays well together.David Pultorak, president of service management consultancy Fox IT will present the conference's keynote on the importance of the IT Infrastructure Library, which is an emerging data center standard for providing IT services across the entire data center infrastructure

Afcom will also be offering some new "virtual data center" tours at the Fall conference, which starts on Sunday, following their success at the group's recent Las Vegas conference (see The View From Vegas). Attendees will be able to take a virtual tour of Computer Associates International Inc.'s (NYSE: CA) Global Command Center, as well as Georgia State University's Network Operations Center, without even leaving the conference hotel.

—James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum