I still don't understand why more data centers don't just use lake source cooling. With a relatively modest upfront investment these companies could reduce the amount of electricity they use for cooling by 90%.
If my understanding of the commercial malware industry is accurate, operating a data center in Russia would be great, until you're muscled into being a spam operation by local organized crime.
It's a wide-spread myth that the weather is cold in Siberia. I do live in Tyumen (West Siberia) and it's +32C here now. So, you cannot save on aircooling.
The two more myths are, that wild bears are all leaning around over here and one can drill oil right in his backyard.
There are no problems with BW, as for the past 8 years Transtelecom and Rostelecom -- both nationwide telcos, deployed a number of transcontinental fiber cables all along the TransSib (the rail-road connecting farthest east and west points of Russia). On both ends they are peering to EU and to Japan/China/Korea.
The average ping from Tyumen to my servers co-located in Mountain View is 180-200ms and the most part of it constitutes by european backbones.
Would you really drop several hundred million in investment in a country that just decided to nationalize all of its oil industry? A country with a history of nationalizing things so that the rich plutocrats keep geting richer?
Well if you don't want to get into details that's a fine position to take. However if you always follow the crowd and never get into details yourself you will never win anything. There are nuances to Russian situation and if you figure them out while others don't you may have an advantage in certain areas. So here come nuances:
Energy industry is insanely profitable and was devoured by Putin's government. Telecom industry is also insanely profitable and was left alone. Why so?
For one, energy was originally privatized with violations (aka stolen) from the government in the 90s, whereas telecoms have mostly grown by themselves. Putin has actually offered oligarchs truce - they keep the money but return the companies back. Some agreed and live very well (Abramovich), others disagreed and are now in exile (Berezovski) or jail (Khodorkovski). Putin can be blamed for nailing them on taxes instead of original theft, but hardly anyone blames US for doing the same to Al Capone, right?
Second difference lies in nature of energy industry itself. Energy is a weapon as Putin has demonstrated us in his treatment of neighboring states. Telecom is not. So, don't hoard Putin's favorite weapon.
Then there are advantages to building DCs in Russia:
1) Energy is cheap there. At some point they actually brought aluminum ore from Africa to process in Russia and shipped it back, because energy was so cheap. Why is it cheap? Because of subsidies. EU is (was?) going nuts over it, but I don't think Putin budged. Energy subsidies are kind of important in cold climates.
2) Talent is plentiful.
3) Europe, China and Japan are close by
4) Real estate is cheap in the areas where you would typically build a DC compared to Europe or Japan.
In this case, it would be a pretty safe bet. The oil industry was owned by even more sinister plutocrats before it was "nationalized" by the current ones. The reason you're hearing so much more about this now is that the current plutocrats are more into long-term strategy and less into dumping their stolen wealth and retiring in London as soon as possible. This is bad for certain Western interests, hence the "Putin is the Devil" stories you see in every other issue of The Economist.
In fact, investing in Russia paid off well for many Western companies, and the Russian government never got in the way (beyond its natural tendency to get in the way due to widespread petty corruption).
You forgot to add, "Where the competitions is routinely "eliminated" by skilled snipers, or radiated posion".
Wasn't last year that a profilic Forbes' editor got killed in Russia?
[+] [-] Alex3917|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] asdflkj|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] henning|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DenisM|17 years ago|reply
Dude, seriously. Russia is not Somalia or wild west.
[+] [-] osipov|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bprater|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ruslan|17 years ago|reply
The two more myths are, that wild bears are all leaning around over here and one can drill oil right in his backyard.
There are no problems with BW, as for the past 8 years Transtelecom and Rostelecom -- both nationwide telcos, deployed a number of transcontinental fiber cables all along the TransSib (the rail-road connecting farthest east and west points of Russia). On both ends they are peering to EU and to Japan/China/Korea.
The average ping from Tyumen to my servers co-located in Mountain View is 180-200ms and the most part of it constitutes by european backbones.
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|17 years ago|reply
Maybe Microsoft, but not me.
[+] [-] DenisM|17 years ago|reply
Energy industry is insanely profitable and was devoured by Putin's government. Telecom industry is also insanely profitable and was left alone. Why so?
For one, energy was originally privatized with violations (aka stolen) from the government in the 90s, whereas telecoms have mostly grown by themselves. Putin has actually offered oligarchs truce - they keep the money but return the companies back. Some agreed and live very well (Abramovich), others disagreed and are now in exile (Berezovski) or jail (Khodorkovski). Putin can be blamed for nailing them on taxes instead of original theft, but hardly anyone blames US for doing the same to Al Capone, right?
Second difference lies in nature of energy industry itself. Energy is a weapon as Putin has demonstrated us in his treatment of neighboring states. Telecom is not. So, don't hoard Putin's favorite weapon.
Then there are advantages to building DCs in Russia:
1) Energy is cheap there. At some point they actually brought aluminum ore from Africa to process in Russia and shipped it back, because energy was so cheap. Why is it cheap? Because of subsidies. EU is (was?) going nuts over it, but I don't think Putin budged. Energy subsidies are kind of important in cold climates.
2) Talent is plentiful.
3) Europe, China and Japan are close by
4) Real estate is cheap in the areas where you would typically build a DC compared to Europe or Japan.
[+] [-] asdflkj|17 years ago|reply
In fact, investing in Russia paid off well for many Western companies, and the Russian government never got in the way (beyond its natural tendency to get in the way due to widespread petty corruption).
[+] [-] osipov|17 years ago|reply
that's false. do you by any chance get your news from the Anglophone media?
[+] [-] ardit33|17 years ago|reply