Gagan Kaul Blog

Google is considering whether it should continue running its own data-centers and developing its own software. According to Silicon Valley Watcher, an interview with John Loiacono revealed that Google has created its own operating system to run its grids that consist of exceptionally cheap software assembled together. And now there are some within Google that question whether they should continue doing that, especially since there is so much open source software, and middleware available (from Sun, of course) and increasingly, specialist grid builders.

Michael Parekh has an interesting write-up on the same topic where he cites that two years ago Google had one data center. Today they are reported to have 64. Two years from now, they will have 300-plus. The advantage to having so many data centers goes beyond simple redundancy and fault tolerance. They get Google closer to users, reducing latency. They offer inter-datacenter communication and load-balancing using that no-longer-dark fiber Google owns. But most especially, they offer super-high bandwidth connections at all peering ISPs at little or no incremental cost to Google.

Over the last few months, Google has been consciously looking at various cost cutting measures in light of rising power costs for managing its data centers. According to Urs Hoelzle, VP of Operations for Google, besides plain system power consumption, additional obstacles for data centers include cooling requirements, inefficiencies in power distribution and data centre layout. Google senior management has been speaking about this issue in various interviews and the current news from Sun executive seems to be a logical extension of the decision making process that must be currently underway in Google.

It would be interesting to note what kind of software Google plans to pick from open source and what functions of its data center management are outsourced. This also means an opportunity for IT vendors to pitch in and build up a more intrinsic relationship with this evolving company.