Who Wants Data Centers in a Box? Apparently a Few, Here and There…

Last May, I posted details on a novel approach to data center flexibility — offering data centers-in-a-box, in the form of fully loaded and equipped portable trailers that could be pulled right up into corporate parking lots and plugged in. IBM, Sun, and even Microsoft were talking up such mobile approaches.

Kind of a neat idea, but I wondered at that point if in this age of emerging software-as-a-service, on-demand, and in-the-cloud com­puting approaches, were such bolt-on facilities really needed?

Plus, another trend working against trailer DCs is the increasing compute power constantly being packed into smaller and denser chips, as well as geometrically growing stor­age capacity that shows no signs of abating. It’s not inconceivable that all the func­tions of an average data center could eventually be packed into a box the size of a desktop computer. IBM’s System z was proof in point — these powerful boxes have relatively small footprints compared to mainframes of old.

Well, Sun Microsystems, which has been making a big deal out of its Project Blackbox, reports that it has signed on about four or five customers. These include the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Hansen Transmissions, Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre (UMCN) and Mobile TeleSystems OJSC (MTS).

You could look at the announcement in terms of the glass being half full or half empty (or better yet, one percent full, 99% empty.)

One industry commentary puts it in the 99% empty perspective, pointing out that in the 15 months Sun has been pushing this trailer approach, it has only signed on four or five customers. That doesn’t seem like an exciting value proposition for vendors contemplating this space, or for companies that want to see how the approach working out in reality.

For end user IT managers, perhaps, as one commenter to the report pointed out, “the real answer is to update your existing datacenter vs. branching out to the parking lot.”