Data centers have become hot properties in real estate and hotbeds for new technologies. As more and more commerce moves online and business operations move to the cloud, the need for data centers to meet those demands continues to grow.
Meanwhile, data center operations professionals need to keep abreast of technologies such as big data, the Internet of Things (IoT), micro data centers, infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS), containers, microservices, and a host of other technologies. How's a data center pro going to keep up with it all? One way is to follow a cadre of data center experts on Twitter.
Here's a list of 23 analysts, consultants, bloggers, journalists, and operations people to keep you up to speed with this fast moving space.
Rhonda Ascierto
Research director for data centers and critical infrastructure, 451 Research
Drawing on her 15 years of experience in IT and business, Ascierto has been a speaker and served on panels at DCD Enterprise conferences, Uptime Institute symposiums, and the Data Center Summit. She writes about data center energy management, energy-efficient data center cooling, and modular data center designs.
Paul Clarke
IMT Critical Facilities team lead, Surrey County Council (UK)
Clarke is the operational manager of two data centers for the Surrey County Council, which provides services to more than 1 million people and has a budget of over £1 billion. He likes to tweet about industry best practices.
Tim Crawford
CIO strategic advisor, AVOA
Crawford has an international reputation in the areas of IT transformation, cloud computing, data analytics, and the Internet of Things and is among the 20 people most often retweeted by IT leaders. A recent popular tweet by Crawford was his take on why enterprises are moving away from the public cloud.
Pete Elton
Senior director for security and compliance, ViaWest
Although Elton's current role is in security and compliance, he has previous experience with multitenant environments, colocation, infrastructure, and PaaS. He also has an understanding of cloud technologies and the relative merits of cloud providers. His tweets focus on hybrid IT, data centers, colocation, and virtualization.
Davis Fisher
Business development manager, Curvature
As business development manager for Curvature, which was recently recognized by Gartner as a top performer in the data center and network maintenance space, Fisher's focus includes optimizing costs and efforts within the data center and helping IT departments with data center relocations and migrations.
Joshua Feinberg
Chief thought leader, vice president, and co-founder, Home Run, Inc.
An old hand at Microsoft channel programs, Feinberg now focuses on differentiation, thought leadership, competitive positioning, sales cycle acceleration, and revenue growth. Data center tweet topics range from choosing cleaning companies for data centers to why data centers should use social media.
Peter Friedman
Manager of FlexPod business development team, NetApp
Friedman describes himself as a "data center guy." As leader of the FlexPod team, he takes on the challenges of cloud computing, such as moving, managing, securing, and adhering to privacy and compliance regulations when handling data. Among the subjects of his tweets are augmented reality in the data center, future-proofing data storage, and facing fears about moving to the cloud.
Carrie Goetz
Global director, technology, Paige DataCom Solutions
A featured speaker at this year's Data Center World in Chicago, Goetz's new business unit at Paige Electric creates LAN/WAN enterprise and solutions sets for end users and system integrators in the intelligent building and data center spaces. Subjects for her data center tweets range from accounting rules that impact data center leases to openings of new data centers.
Ferhat Hatay
Director of strategy and innovation, Fujitsu Global
Hatay's business and technical expertise is in the Internet of Things, real-time analytics, big data, and cloud computing. He describes himself as "forever rocket scientist" and sprinkles his tweets with sarcasm and humor.
John Heiderscheidt
Compliance/business development, MDI Access
Heiderscheidt is a Chicago-area attorney and real estate broker who focuses on all aspects of data centers. Recent tweets touch on security, outage issues, and machine learning in the data center.
Bill Kleyman
CTO, MTM Technologies
Kleyman is not only a cloud and virtualization architect and the CTO of MTM, but also a prolific freelance writer who has published over 800 articles and interactive pieces. Currently he covers everything from data center design to virtualization and cloud best practices.
Bryan Loewen
Executive managing director, Newmark Knight Frank
Loewen is responsible for global acquisitions, sales, site selection, and development of data centers, colocation facilities, and hosting sites for the global corporate services division of the commercial real estate services firm Newmark Knight Frank. In addition to tweeting about data center real estate deals and openings, he also writes about breaking data center news.
Kristina Metzger
Data center specialist, CBRE
Metzger specializes in data center site selection, negotiation, and acquisition for Los Angeles-based CBRE, the world's largest commercial real estate services and investment company. Many of her tweets focus on data center building and expansion.
Colleen Miller
Principal, Miller Social Media
Although Miller's principal business is advising nonprofits, small businesses, and artists on expanding their online audiences with social media, she's a self-described data center nerd. Her Twitter feed includes a steady stream of news about data center developments.
Rich Miller
Founder and editor, Data Center Frontier
If Miller's name looks familiar, it's probably because his tweets are commonly retweeted by members of the data center community. That may be because, while many data center writers target the here and now with their scribbles, Miller likes to focus on the future and cutting-edge innovations in design, efficiency, and scalability.
Andy Patrizio
Data center columnist, Network World
Patrizio is a freelance writer whose specialties include data centers, cloud computing, and virtualization. He tweets about breaking news and data center trends.
Marcia Savage
Executive editor, Network Computing
As the manager of a website focusing on in-depth analysis of emerging technologies and advice for IT architects and engineers, Savage is close to developments important to data center pros, such as those in artificial intelligence and the latest on data center design.
Greg Schulz
Independent IT advisor, author, blogger, and consultant
In addition to his writing endeavors, Schulz is the founder of StorageIO, a provider of consulting services about data infrastructure topics to vendors, end users, and VARs. Many of his tweets touch on virtualization and storage subjects.
Kim Stevenson
Senior vice president and general manager for data center infrastructure, Lenovo
Stevenson is passionate about digital transformation. She believes every business decision today is shaped by technology. She maintains that technology is disrupting every business and only two choices are available: be a disrupter or be disrupted; standing still is not an option. In addition to her data center tweets, she also tweets about staffing issues and cloud computing.
Yevgeniy Sverdlik
Editor in chief, Data Center Knowledge
Sverdlik is editor of a source of daily news and analysis about the data center industry with an emphasis on trends driving the growth in demand for mission-critical facilities and the challenges and opportunities of high-density computing, including its impact on power and cooling. He tweets about topics such as lithium batteries in data centers, cloud services, land use, encryption, and machine learning.
Jabez Tan
Research director for data center and cloud market intelligence, Structure Research
As head of the data center practice at Structure Research, Tan produces in-depth market intelligence reports and analytical insights on the competitive and strategic landscape of data center colocation. He's also a familiar face as a speaker at conferences such as HostingCon, CapRate Data Centre Summit San Francisco, and Cloud Expo Asia and Data Centre World Hong Kong.
James van den Berg
Microsoft ICT specialist
Van den Berg works for the largest education institute in the Netherlands. He's a system center cloud and data center management Microsoft Most Valued Professional. Many of his tweets are about Microsoft Azure.
Ron Vokoun
Director of construction management for data centers, M+W Group
Vokoun has 27 years of experience in the construction industry with a focus on building scalable, highly efficient, water-conscious, and sustainable data centers. In addition to tweeting about data center construction, he also tweets about sustainability and cloud computing.
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