Oh and don't forget to order some Data Center with that.

It  was 1990 something in Rochester NY, and Andy Ernst from Applied Digital was paying me a visit as all good sales people do from time to time.  We found ourselves sharing ideas on the current state of technology,  local news and of course, discussing projects for the coming fiscal year.  

As a parting shot of tongue and cheek Andy quipped; and of course you'll want some SAN with that too? 

So many of Andy's clients were asking for a Quote for SAN.  What a SAN was they weren't exactly sure but they knew the latest Tech Rags we're excited about this new promised land and they wanted in. Often they weren't exactly sure what they needed or how they would use it but they were confident any salesman worth his salt could turn back a quote in a couple of minutes.  

A story that is more than flush with a few object lessons, one I find poetically salient is a notion that many of us fall victim to that, IT can be treated like a collection of objects.

"Hello. Welcome to MacNology may I take your order?"  The speaker crackles and hisses.

"Yes" I shout excitedly,  "Gimmie 100 VM number 3's, a SAN number 4 with de-duplication, 25 CyberSecurity with Access Control and Extra firewall,  hold the reverse proxy and plenty of service desk to go with it all."  

Bizzurt the speaker cracks, "we are having a special on SaaS and BPaaS  today, buy one get one free, can I interest you in a Medium? it would go great with your order!" 

Wow! I had not even thought of it "certainly" I reply and salivate thinking how excited everyone will be when I bring that to the office.

Snarraak the speaker buzzes again "so that will be..(repeats order flawlessly)... Did you want to supersize that for a million extra?"

I reply, "No thanks but I do want redundancy for DR thanks", duh never to be so dumb as to fall for the upsize. 

"Will there be anything else?" 

Oh my, I realize almost too late and blurt out "oh yes just one more thing, would you toss in some data center and some networks to connect it all?"

Bizzurt the speaker cracks again,  "Sure no problem, I'll put that on the take out tray for you. That will be $12 million 500 please pull around to window 3, and Thanks!

Well as silly as this may sound, frankly it seems all too often our fast food culture tries to make its way into our professional lives. 

Not only do our technology decisions get dumped down from high complexity considerations to something more easily digested,  the achievable business value in the selections are often akin to the nutritional value of cheep holiday candy.

Most importantly we often overlook the most important decision, the data center and their attendant networks as an after thought rather than, as I would argue, the single most important decision.

Choosing the right data center and networks is the dinning equivalent of looking at the fat content or selecting the appropriate beverage.

Too much of it or the wrong selection ruins the meal and leaves one feeling uncomfortable, too little and the satisfaction isn't as enhanced, one may even feel a little wanting.

All that we do rides over the network and those networks are accessed through data centers.

Yea, yea, we all know.. "The network is the computer" and all that jazz!

So it's simple to find the hottest networks and sexiest data centers, done and dusted, next,  right ?

Not so fast guest number 42.

Take a look at the disruption from social media, IOT, Big Data and Analytics. 

The needs of business change with the needs of the customer.  The customers connect in new and different ways from new markets. 

If you invest in sites with fast networks, the hot sites of all hot sites, what do you do when those sites become irrelevant? 

Consider just the word "Cloud" what is an IT cloud, is it something that stores all of your infrastructure somewhere in the "sky" perhaps.  

One thing I know about clouds from hours of childhood laying on my back eating fries and watching clouds,  clouds - move.  

They change shape horizontally and vertically the travel across the sky they rise they fall. 

Locking your IT environment into a specific site is the dining equivalent of eating a diet of some sugar coated deep fried fat pill of epic proportion.  

Oh yes it may have seemed like a good idea at the time, now your spending money and time dieting and exercising to get yourself lean enough to move again. 

Network and Data center choices need to be about dynamics, flexibility, and having the services you need available at the speed of LAN. Most of all, you need to be able to consume just enough to get and stay fit, to be in an agile condition, to be able to adopt and stay centric to your consumer.

Consuming with intelligence and forethought towards change will help to prevent finding yourself having to spend money just to get moving.