Google's CEO has made some interesting comments recently about their current IT architecture, its viability, and its costs:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/21/business/GOOGLE.php Here's the section of particular relevance: Google continued to make substantial capital investments, mainly in computer servers, networking equipment and its data centers. It spent $345 million on such items in the first quarter, more than double the level of last year. Yahoo, its closest rival, spent $142 million on capital expenses in the first quarter. Referring to the sheer volume of Web site information, video and e-mail that Google's servers hold, Schmidt said: "Those machines are full. We have a huge machine crisis." Jordan Rohan of RBC Capital Markets called Google's capital spending "unfathomably high," noting that it spent the same percentage of its revenue on equipment as a wire-line phone company. "If Google's market share continues to increase, and its position as the central hub of the Internet is reinforced, an extra $1 billion is a worthwhile investment," Rohan said. "The day market share peaks, we have a problem." - - - - - $345 million in capital expenses alone (excluding the tall operating expenses for that pile). In one quarter. Good grief. Those cheap servers aren't so cheap. Also, Google's service availability is bad and seems to be getting worse. (Blogger is a mess.) Google's CEO sounds like he's starting to understand that something has to change, to his credit. There are some alternative architectures out there. For example, how does Lexis-Nexis do their work? What's their service availability? http://www.lexisnexis.com/presscenter/mediakit/datacenter.asp [ Speaking for myself. ] - - - - - Timothy F. Sipples Consulting Enterprise Software Architect, z9/zSeries IBM Japan, Ltd. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: GET IBM-MAIN INFO Search the archives at http://bama.ua.edu/archives/ibm-main.html
