http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp%3FndmViewId%3Dnews_view%26newsId%3D20070530005712%26newsLang%3Den

FRAMINGHAM, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Next Generation Data Centerâ„¢ (NGDCâ„¢), the only strategic IT event focused on the complete end-to-end solution and new technologies for the data center, has announced that the Ethernet Alliance and Open Grid Forum (OGF) have both signed on as sponsors. The networking and grid technology focuses of the event will be further strengthened by the addition of the Ethernet Pavilion, sponsored by the Ethernet Alliance, and the Grid Pavilion, sponsored by the Open Grid Forum. NGDC is scheduled to debut August 6-9, 2007, at the Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco, CA. NGDC focuses on new technologies and their impact on the data center, covering mission-critical applications and the technology supporting those applications including storage, servers, networking and communications.

Wow, very cool, the event does sound cool. So what is the next generation data center going to be like? Are we moving to a virtualized infrastructure that moves with the business in a follow the sun approach - virtualized network, storage and server? One where my virtual machines switch from London to New York, following the sun as we go? Or even to the next level wherever the energy is cheapest? All these kind of ideas need real effective data center management, management of the power, cooling, air flow etc, complete management of the data center as a unit, with as much automation and lights out functionality as possible, the concept that if the data center air conditioning failed an alert would go to the operators and the software could start migrating systems to my bcp site, my New York site? How cool would it be if during a power failure, New York was my bcp? That my systems would fail over to whichever ESX servers had capacity seamlessly?

Back to the event, it does sound very cool and features a number of very cool speakers, look at the key notes! Dell, Ebay, Novell, HP and theCo-Founder of VMWare! Wow! The topics sound great, applications, virtualization, data center optimization and security to name a few, there is also an exhibit hall, these are always great, they give you the chance to have a chat with people to talk about the products, I wonder if Blue Lane will be there?

The event sounds fantastic, very cool, check it out, and it’s backed by a lot of groups so should be informative and in that respect means you’ll meet not just vendors but a mixture of people dealing with the data center issues operationally and strategically - very cool.