Indiana as an Information Highway Hub

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Permalink Reply by Matt Theobald on February 8, 2008 at 4:44am

The Global NOC at IUPUI is one indicator.
Hoping development of ISEN as an Indiana company will contribute as well.
If Indiana audits all of its public knowledge resources from government, education and commerce, we will be the first to do so.

What would this look like:

Show me all the databases in the State.
ISEN will catalog them up, down and sideways with a great user experience.
All Your Databases Belong to You.

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Permalink Reply by Bruce LaDuke on February 8, 2008 at 7:07pm

Hey Matt,

Can you help me understand what the Global NOC is? I've never heard of this. Also, I'm curious about ISEN...maybe help me understand the overarching vision for the company? Sounds like really great stuff.

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Permalink Reply by Matt Theobald on February 9, 2008 at 3:14pm

Thanks Bruce,

One of if not THE central Networks Operations Centers for Internet 2 or Abilene as it is called is run out the basement of the IUPUI library, the physical connection is at an undisclosed location downtown. It is the center of the "new" network between universities and government research labs. Their own pipeline, uncrowded by popular usage. This is the Global NOC.

It is important for them to have this private network so that they don't succumb to network outages and heavy traffic times on the popular Internet. It's just another telecom infrastructure as far as I know. Wikipedia has an article on Internet 2 I think.

ISEN is an initiative to catalog the databases on the Internet thereby revealing the deep web (information that is in databases) This is 500 to 650 times the amount of information than is available on the surface which Google and Yahoo get to only 25% of anyway.

The company is based provided free access to free resources and describing fee schedules for the fee resources. This way you can find all the free info for free and find out how to pay for fee based information vendors. (i.e. Lexis-Nexis, Dialog, Westlaw) There is much more information on the blog.isen.org

We plan to register databases like domain names except we collect a great deal of metadata about the resource.
Then we create a database of databases or metadatabase.

Sponsorship or advertising is another revenue stream, followed by federated search tools, avatar alerts, commodifying privacy and finally ISEN mirroring. There will be an explanation of these things in greater detail at the Indiana State Library on the 21st at 4:30. We are announcing the project there. We hope to have some video to post on the blog and on SmallerIndiana.com There is an ISEN group on SI if you'd like to join.

Thanks for asking!

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Permalink Reply by Bruce LaDuke on February 9, 2008 at 4:56pm

It's going to take me a while to digest the information at the ISEN blog, but I see all kinds of tie ins with Future Indiana.

The forecasting piece of all of this is based on data gathered from various sources. I'd like to serve as a hub of experts more than the expert panel and connect people that are already focused on the various components into one message, maybe helping them find data sources.

But it might be good to also supplement in areas that are not covered. There are all kinds of interesting possibilities here.

I'm goiing to add a link to ISEN on the Future Indiana site. Thanks for sharing and I'll revisit this again after I digest everything.

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Permalink Reply by Doug Theis on February 19, 2008 at 10:08pm

Bruce,

We share your vision. My company, Lifeline Data Centers, has the vision of transforming Indianapolis into a national presence for data center services. We have the Eastgate Mall under contract and expect to close on the property in the next 30-60 days. Our plans include over 450,000 square feet of data center space, up to 200,000 of low-cost technology office space, and access to all of the locally present telecom providers in a carrier-neutral model with no cross connect fees. Our goal is to put Indy in the same list as northern Virginia, Atlanta, and Silicon Valley when large clients are considering multiple thousands of square feet of customized tier IV data center space.

You're also right on the money about our unique advantages: Indy has great power rates, access to most of the major telecom carriers, no union restrictions on construction labor, and flexible building codes that allow us to deliver quality data center space at the low end of the cost spectrum. We're excited about the future. We believe our project is good for the east side, good for the city, and good for the state.

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Permalink Reply by Bruce LaDuke on February 21, 2008 at 5:59pm

Doug,

You've really got me thinking here...a couple of thoughts:

Listening to your post, I start to visualize how our central physical location seems to be an asset in this data market. In particular, I wonder about the prospects of serving as a hub for data center backup and disaster recovery type stuff. Seems like Indy would be in a prime and relatively 'safe' location, at least in terms of a low risk for the big disruptions like major earthquakes, tsunamis, or hurricanes.

Is there a large market in this and I'm curious if you're company is working in this space?

Also, and this to the whole group...its interesting that we're talking about both the data and the data center here in two separate posts. Also, its not scientific, but when I look at the groups joining Smaller Indiana, the web development group seems to be growing like gangbusters. I'd put these folks in the category of content development. Related to this, I work for in the pharma sector and we have a lot of talk about creating a health sciences hub. But what about a health sciences information hub? Is that just as critical?

So I see three or four categories emerging here:

1) Content development
2) Data warehousing and mining
3) Data centers

And maybe a fourth one related to state of the art connectivity, not sure.

Do this ring true? And I'm curious about what everyone here thinks about synergies among these areas. Is there synergy today? Should there be? If yes, what does it look like? What else is needed to support this and to attract the talent? How much of the infrastructure is in place? What other sectors would compliment this?

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Permalink Reply by Doug Theis on February 21, 2008 at 7:16pm

Bruce,

The market for backup and disaster recovery is huge. And the market for primary data center space is bigger. One of the data center industry groups predicts that 80% of companies will outgrow and replace their existing data centers in the next five years. Indy is a day's drive from half of the U.S. population, and that makes it a perfect place for such services.

As far as information hubs, Indiana's I-Light Network is a forward-minded initiative by the state to link universities in Indiana for research. Indiana is one of only a handful of states to fund such infrastructure to improve the technology business climate and stop the brain drain.

Foundations are being laid. This is a very exciting time for Indiana. But It takes relentless action from both public and private interests to build this brighter future.

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Permalink Reply by Steven M. Willis on February 27, 2008 at 8:57pm

How many people does an average size data center employ? What are the job titles employed? What other businesses typically support a data center?

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Permalink Reply by Doug Theis on February 27, 2008 at 9:56pm

Steven,

Like most businesses, data centers come in all shapes and sizes. Some are more IT services centric, others are more facilities, communications and real estate centric, others are more virtual in their offerings.

Job titles include operations, network, systems, and telecommunications engineers, sales, electrical and mechanical trades, and regulatory compliance.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by businesses that support a data center. If you are referring to clients, it is companies of all sizes who bet their business on their computer and communications technology. Their cost of downtime is typically high, the cost of lost data is higher, and internal, vendor and client communications are critical to success.

If you are referring to vendors, it is computer and telecom equipment vendors, electrical and mechanical vendors along with management software vendors of many ilks.

Permalink Reply by Robyn Miller on February 27, 2008 at 9:24pm

Unfortunately, wanting to be known for our virtual resources, but then selling the presence of an actual place still doesn't work as a model, as far as I can tell. And I know you don't want to go into the issues, Bruce, but that may be exactly why we aren't there. Not many do. But the fact is that there's a cultural schism in this town that we can either continue to fight, or try to leverage. Some places are able to overcome the by shear volume of corporate capital, but we just don't have that.

So, as usual Bruce, I don't have a ton of answers for you ;) But my question to you is, how do we leverage the schism or draw the capital? We can't be an information HUB physically when all we are leveraging is truly virtually co-located, because then, well, there's just no draw!

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Permalink Reply by Doug Theis on February 27, 2008 at 10:05pm

Of what schism do you speak, Robyn?

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Permalink Reply by Robyn Miller on February 27, 2008 at 10:14pm

Where to begin...

The schism where people, even though they have PhDs, decide not to expose their children to other cultural environments and that they're children don't need more than a high school education. The place where people decide that owning a larger home is more important than paying for better schools. The environment where a new high school stadium is more important than music and science. The culture where new is bad, and old is good.

And that's really just the beginning.

We have people who want change and new things and intellectual capital in Indiana. And then we have that.

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