UPDATED 07:34 EDT / FEBRUARY 26 2015

Coolan wants to keep tabs on your data center in the cloud

4381851322_d46fd7d75e_nA new startup led by one of the founders of Facebook’s Open Compute Project is bidding to make data centers more economical by gathering and analyzing performance data from thousands of users, with a service it calls “community-based analytics”.

Coolan is the brainchild of Amir Michael, who worked on the team that founded Facebook’s Open Compute Project. The startup launched a beta version of its service earlier this week. It works by aggregating anonymized performance data of customers’ IT equipment in order to diagnose any problems with their hardware, uncover flaws in an individual manufacturer’s equipment, and predict failures.

Speaking to PC World, Michael said Coolan’s system is capable of identifying the cause of problems in the data center simply by looking at the historical data, whether it’s monitoring 100 or 1,000 servers. Of course, most vendors already offer their own management tools, but Michael argues that Coolan is more trustworthy because it doesn’t have a vested interest in what results it finds – it simply tells it as it is, providing comparative data on which models are the most reliable.

Michael also argues that Coolan’s results will be much more accurate because its data set will eventually become much larger, if it manages to attract multiple customers using equipment from a wider pool of vendors.

That’s a big if, because customers have historically been quite protective of their data. Many companies might be unwilling to share all of their operational data with a third-party like Coolan. But Michael begs to differ, telling PC World that companies are willing to be more open if it can help reduce their costs.

“People are starting to feel more comfortable about sharing information about their infrastructure,” Michael said.

Indeed, Michael told Datacenter Dynamics that the service has already been up and running in stealth for some time, and already counts a large pool of users who’re contributing data. The company’s software is available for download as a free beta at the moment, but there are plans to start monetizing it later – either as a subscription service or through vendor sponsorship.

“Our main focus at this point, before we monetize, is to solve real problems, to figure out what are the features people want,” Michael told Datacenter Dynamics.

photo credit: Datacenter Work via photopin (license)


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