Douglas Gourlay


Latest from Douglas Gourlay

How Do You Determine Data Center Power Rates?

Am making a spreadsheet comparing different products and looking at longer term costs, maintenance, power, cooling, and such.  I felt that rather than scrubbing the DOE sites and trying to get power costs by state I would just use the national average, but then fell flat on that because I found negotiated rates could be ...

What Does Cisco Have in Common with Kanye West?

In March 1999 Scott Bradner from Harvard University and Jim McQuaid of NetScout got together and published RFC 2544 – "Benchmarking Methodology."  In the subsequent eleven years this informational RFC has been used to provide a baseline for testing many networking devices.  It is designed to provide consistency between vendors so an end-customer can make ...

The Cautionary Tale of IKON Office Solutions – Sound Familar?

Sometimes the ‘golden handcuffs’ tarnish the other hands in the company… Thirteen years ago I worked at a small technology consulting firm, headquartered out of Columbia South Carolina, named The Computer Group.  TCG was acquired by IKON Office Solutions, the copier company. IKON then went on a spending spree over the next year acquiring many ...

How Cisco Systems Could Improve

I am still a very proud alumnus of Cisco Systems, but am also not bashful about areas I think the networking behemoth can improve.  My primary recommendation would be to get the business units working together to consistently solve customer problems – be a big company, but act like one company, as opposed to the ...

Three Words You Wouldn’t Hear 10 Years Ago: Homebrew Render Farm

It all started when I wanted  some new network icons.  Somehow all the ones I used in the past were made by an art department I strangely do not have access to anymore, and I really don’t want to have to pay an agency to make them for me.  I could probably outsource somewhere, but ...

HP Takes Out 3Com: What’s The Next Step in Consolidation?

People have been asking me for a while what the next ‘shot’ would be in the tech titan border-clash.  Cisco entered the server market with UCS, and everyone was wondering what the response would be. I didn’t think 3Com would be taken off the market this quickly, I figured everyone would wait a year or ...