The Leader - September/October 2008 - (Page 100) car eer pr ofIle by jennie lazarus Dean Nelson It and real estate must Work together suN mIcrosYstems’ DeaN NelsoN How does one move from a 19 year career in IT and find himself squarely in corporate real estate (CRE)? Just ask Dean Nelson, Senior Director of Global Lab & Datacenter Design Services (GDS) in the Workplace Resources business unit of Sun Microsystems, who says he has “stepped into a completely new world with this job.” Moving out of the technology groups (engineering software and hardware) at Sun and into CRE, Nelson had to tackle the complex, costly technical infrastructure, consisting of datacenters and labs. He created a new group to attack both the physical and technical design as well as the cultural changes required to become efficient. He found that he needed to be able to speak two languages, IT and Real Estate. He states, “The two areas are converging and must work together. This convergence will continue in the future because of the explosion of the internet and the fact that everyone in the world is ‘participating’. Everyone in all walks of life is contributing content and driving demand for new services, regardless of sector or business.” In looking at the products Sun is building and planning to build, Nelson knew the old way of designing datacenters was on its way out. Nelson points out that “Sun must be part of the solution because it is also part of the problem. The legacy of thinking of power, cooling, cabling – how we used to do it – just doesn’t work anymore.” The team took a modular approach, coming up with a basic building block called a pod. With this new design, Sun has constructed new energy-efficient datacenters in the United Kingdom, India, and the United States, as well as compressing 152 datacenters at various California locations into 14 new centers in Santa Clara. Nelson and his sevenmember team have not only saved the company millions of dollars by consolidating Sun datacenters and labs around the world, but have made the company more agile — achieving 88 percent reduction in real estate, and a 60 percent reduction in power consumption. Nelson’s primary job is bridging the gap between IT and facilities. After being in the tech industry for many years, Nelson now sees the “other side with CRE and can appreciate how much work goes into it. There is a perception problem on the IT side on the difficulty of CRE, but there is a learning curve on the CRE side to make sure that they can communicate with their technical customers. I have had the pleasure of translating that in the CRE world.” CoreNet Global has given him an additional platform for this translation. As a presenter of an educational session at the recent San Diego Summit and at the Northern California Discovery Forum, Nelson says that these experiences have “opened many doors to other CRE executives for collaboration and knowledge transfer to continue this education in the industry.” When asked about the most significant thing he did to bring him to his position at Sun, Nelson says, “I stepped out of my comfort zone and questioned ‘the way we always used to do it. Knowing the physical. Knowing the technical. When you can balance and translate between both of these areas, you can achieve the objectives of both. I believe every company should have a group doing this function. If you don’t, you’re wasting tons of money, and you’re stunting the ability of your company to turn on a dime.” Read more about Nelson and the Sun Microsystems Datacenter Program on the CoreNet Global Knowledge Center Online. “Aligning Business Organizations — Sun’s Approach for Building Energy Efficient Datacenters.” http://www2.corenetglobal.org/dotCMS/ kcoAsset?assetInode=3611764 “Eco Datacenters: A Cool New Reality”San Diego Summit presentation http://www2.corenetglobal.org/dotCMS/ kcoAsset?assetInode=3484440 “Energy Efficient Datacenters: The Role of Modularity in Datacenter Design” http://www2.corenetglobal.org/dotCMS/ kcoAsset?assetInode=3683609 2 0 0 8 th e le aDe r 100 septemBer / octoBer http://www2.corenetglobal.org/dotCMS/kcoAsset?asstTnode=3484440 http://www2.corenetglobal.org/dotCMS/kcoAsset?asstTnode=3484440 http://www2.corenetglobal.org/dotCMS/kcoAsset?assetTnode=3484440 http://www2.corenetglobal.org/dotCMS/kcoAsset?assetTnode=3484440 http://www2.corenetglobal.org/dotCMS/kcoAsset?assetTnode=3683609 http://www2.corenetglobal.org/dotCMS/kcoAsset?assetTnode=3683609
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