The Wood Frame Story

When I started working, the buzz word around the industry was data centers. Every one, who was worth the salt, was planning for a data center. One cold May morning (Come on Bangalore was like that decades back) my boss called us for a meeting. It was about data centers. He said wrap up your socks guys we are going to be big here. We will offer “holistic services” to the data center majors and the upcoming data centers. He showed us a presentation about Exodus (it was still around and making news) and how 65% of the internet traffic relies on them and how much services they would need or breed of its kind would need to sustain and grow. Ultimately those were the days of internet and the growth story. We came down to the hallway and Ravi our ephemeral sales head said, this is going to be good all boss wants us to sale more and may be add some more innovative services. So after a brief sojourn we started our planning, after all boss had numbers in mind and he translated that beautifully.

My first stop was at a consumer Durables Company, (which was in to telephony also -not naming it here) and we met the systems head, who was arguably the most unsmiling face I ever met (till date). On a grump note he dictated out the requirements and it took him approximately 2 hours 32 minutes (yes K recorded the time) to tell us that the company has plans for data center. Did we hear correct was the first look we gave him! Hurriedly we jotted down the scope and the deliverables. We almost ran back to office and then what started can be called as an epic. The Singporean IT major I was working with was not all that tech savvy and in the sales department all we had was a slow dialup connecting us to the outer world. Google was still not known and Wiki was unheard of and the only way we could get some information was through internal literatures.

We decided hurriedly that this was our day in the space. We spoke to every one we know, you know the partners the big principals. Every one started sending us the best pricing possible (all laptops, servers, switches, desktops, routers, cables, connectors, racks etc etc) and we collated all of that and presented it to our solution architect Keshab. Keshab was at loss and was wary of the fact that none of us had any experience in data centers, we had done some projects by then in the network integration space, but come on, Keshab said, ”Guys do we really know what we intend to do here?” I still remember Ravi’s words, “Sara daal denge aur koi aacha sa naam de denge, jaise ki, the Wood frame Solution”. (We put all of that and will name the solution wood frame solution). Kehsab asked, “Ok! But what on Earth is Wood Frame?” Ravi with his blemish baritone replied, “It sounds good, nothing else matters!”

Well that’s how the journey begun. We posted it to our clients and sold 1000’s of gadgets since then over the two years. After years I met Ravi, and we had a quick drink (this was the time I was on the verge of starting on my own), I asked him, “Anna you remember the wood frame?” He laughed and said you won’t believe I still sell Wood Frame’s in the name of adaptive computing for a large company (lets not name the company).

Aren’t the companies across the world still do the same? Aren’t they selling wooden frames to there customers?

Read these Excerpts:

“Planning for the data center is critical, and gaining an understanding of your precise needs allows XXXX to tailor a solution specifically for your demands. After consulting with customers, current and future business needs are translated into optimized facility and system designs. Pinpointing the correct architecture and cooling capacity avoids costly over-shooting and delivers a solution that grows as you grow. Industry roadmaps, partnerships and XXXX’s engineering bench-strength in data center optimization allow our customers to deploy solutions that scale with their business needs. Services around data center design; layout, thermal flows and power optimization are combined with customized hardware to provide solutions that meet specific customer needs.”

“At XXX, we envision a world of many clouds, both public and private, that are open and compatible. We offer an extensive portfolio of products and services and are fostering open communities and partner ecosystems to make this vision a reality. It all starts with the delivery of the XXX Cloud, a public compute and storage infrastructure service, which is due out later this year.”

Isn’t it the same wood frame story? Every one is selling everything shrink wrapped. The world has just got smarter.