Emc Indiana Illinois

Building out a private cloud, Chicago style

What would you do with a free high-speed network that piped together all your various data centers? Why, build a cloud, of course!

The story of how the K-12 educational agency in Illinois drove a cloud computing project through the works is illustrative of how cloud-style service delivery requires deep-down, long-term changes to how an IT department functions.

Jim Peterson, CTO of the IlliniCloud , was the director of technology for K-12 education in Bloomington when work began on solving a familiar, thorny and persistent problem: supporting IT infrastructure at schools. He said that, although 870 school districts might have had the same needs, IT operations were handled differently from one locale to the next. He also said there was an overabundance of resources in some places -- and none in others -- so a small coalition of administrators wanted to solve that problem by adopting the cloud computing model.

"Twenty districts had the excess infrastructure; we selected three based on geography," he said. "Excess infrastructure" meant idle storage in some cases, underutilized application servers in others, or even available data center space waiting to be racked and stacked.

Peterson said the idea was pretty easy to grok for end users; even school principals had heard of the Internet by now, and watching Amazon prove the model commercially made it an viable idea for IT staff. He said one of the linchpins of the project was ubiquitous, excellent private network capabilities provided by the state's Department of Central Management Services. The Illinois Century Network serves the entire state and provided a central hub to design the IlliniCloud around.

"Having this closed network was nice and fun, and didn't cost us anything," Peterson said.

Free networking is a pretty compelling place to start building a cloud. It also excused the project from the security and data management concerns involved in public hosting. Peterson added that they're not paying for floor space either, since the data centers are already run by the school districts.

The evolving IT needs of classrooms Peterson said IT needs were rapidly growing as modern technology entered the classrooms; aside from basic technology tools like email and desktop support, multimedia files were quickly overloading local systems.

"They might need a new student platform, some schools may need backups; other ones might have a lot of services, but not enough people to manage it," he said.

bmw data » Electric Motors Corporation's Plans for EV ...

Wakarusa, IN (PRWEB) August 23, 2009

Electric Motors Corporation, a Colorado corporation (EMCO.PK), a leader in the emerging electric vehicle industry, continues to move forward with its plans to establish a strategic manufacturing center in Northern Indiana. As part of this initiative, the company today announced an agreement with Livernois Vehicle Development, one of the largest automotive engineering firms in Detroit.

An industrial automation and assembly expert, Livernois will provide the engineering services to ensure that EMC’s electric drive train systems are fully compliant with the chassis and body parameters of light, medium, and heavy-duty vehicles, including the Ford F150 pickup, which will be retrofitted with EMC’s electric drive train systems. Livernois will be launching an electric vehicle engineering division as a direct result of its joint venture with EMC.

“Livernois is very excited about partnering with EMC on this exciting new project,” said Norma Wallis, President of Livernois Vehicle Development. “It’s a real boost for the economies of both Indiana and Michigan. We’re creating new products as well as a new future by bringing the automotive market here in Michigan, together with the expertise of the recreational vehicle industry in Indiana.”

In addition to its new partnership with Livernois, EMC has entered into agreements with several other automotive manufacturing companies in Indiana and Michigan, including recreational vehicle manufacturer Gulf Stream Coach. “Our partnership with Livernois, as well as with other leading companies, represents the beginning of a much larger network of suppliers, manufacturers, and other vendors to the electric vehicle industry,” said Wil Cashen, EMC’s CEO. “Incorporating electric drive systems into existing vehicles is fast becoming a significant part of the automotive industry’s future. Livernois’ superb engineering skills will help us achieve that goal faster and more efficiently.”

Part of EMC’s grand design is to establish Elkhart County, Indiana as the center of the EV industry in the United States. Elkhart, known as the capital of the recreational vehicle industry, has been hit especially hard by the recession, with unemployment topping 18 percent. EMC’s Elkhart County facilities are expected to drive a significant number of jobs to the area.

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